I. 


TON 


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i£x  ICtbrtfi 


SEYMOUR  DURST 


When  you  leave,  please  leave  this  hook 

Because  it  has  heen  said 
"Ever'thing  comes  t'  him  who  waits 

Except  a  loaned  hook." 


Avery  Architectural  and  Fine  Arts  Library 
Gift  of  Seymour  B.  Durst  Old  York  Library 


Digitized  by 

the  Internet . 

Archive 

in  2013 

http://archive.org/details/bookofnewyorkOOshac_0 


THE  BOOK  OF 
NEW  YORK 

By 

ROBERT  SHACKLETON 

Author  of  "The  Book  of  Boston," 
"Unvisited  Places  of  Old  Europe,"  Etc. 


Illustrated  with  Photographs 
and  with  Drawings  by  R.  L.  BoYKR 


THE  PENN  PUBLISHING 
COMPANY  PHILADELPHIA 


1928 


COPYRIGHT 
19  17  BY 
THE  PENN 
PUBLISHING 
COMPANY 


Tke  Book  of  New  York 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I   A  City  Young  and  Old  1 

II  The  Great  Indifferent  City     ....  14 

III  Down  at  the  Battery  34 

IV  The  Church  and  the  Street     ....  44 
V   Around  City  Hall  Park  57 

VI  ''Million-footed  Manhattan"   ....  70 

VII   Up  the  Bowery  81 

VIII  Some  Contrasts  of  the  City     ....  97 

IX   Among  the  Tenements  107 

X   Tammany  124 

XI   The  City  of  Foreigners  135 

XII    Two  Notable  Squares  147 

XIII  Gramercy    and    Stuyvesant    and  Old 

Chelsea   158 

XIV  Up  Fifth  to  Forty-Sfcond  168 

XV   Above  Forty-Second  187 

XVI    On  MURR.VY  Hill  205 

XVII  Midst  Pleasures  and  Palaces    ....  213 

XVIII    Superstitions  of  the  City  228 

XIX    Streets  and  Ways  241 

XX   The  Region  of  Riverside  258 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAQZ 

XXI  To  JuMEL  AND  Van  Cortlandt    ....  268 

XXII    Hamilton  and  Burr  280 

XXIII  Where  Many  Thousands  Dwell     .    .    .  290 

XXIV  Up  the  Hudson  302 

XXV  West  Point      .........  317 

XXVI   Down  the  Bay   .    >    .  328 

XXVII  In  Greenwich  Village    .    .    .    .    .  .343 

XXVIII  Washington  Square   .    .        >    „   r.-    .  357 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


The  Governor's  Room  in  the  City  Hall  .  .  Frontispiece 
Madison  Square  Garden    .    .    .    Title  Page  Decoration 


PAGE 

The  Brooklyn  Bridge   (heading)  1 

The  Statue  of  Liberty   (initial)  1 

The  Bowling  Green   (tailpiece)  13 

The  Hall  of  Fame   (initial)  14 

Staircase  and  Rotunda  of  the  Old  City  Hall  (facing)  16 

Poe's  Cottage   (tailpiece)  33 

The  Old  House  on  the  Battery  ....  (initial)  34 

The  Battery   (facing)  36 

Lower  Manhattan   (tailpiece)  43 

The  Stock  Exchange   (initial)  44 

Old  Trinity,  far  overtopped  by  Office  Buildings 

  (facing)  46 

Fraunces  Tavern   (tailpiece)  56 

St.  Paul's  on  Broadway   (initial)  57 

The  Old  City  Hall  and  its  Setting  .    .    .  (facing)  66 

Statue  of  Nathan  Hale   (tailpiece)  69 

The  Equitable  Building   (initial)  70 

Minetta  Street   (tailpiece)  80 

Statue  of  Peter  Cooper   (initial)  81 

The  Sherman  Statue     ......  (facing)  84 

Old  St.  Mark's   (tailpiece)  96 

The  Ancient  Church  in  Eastchester    .    .  (initial)  97 

The  End  of  106th  Street   (tailpiece)  106 

The  Cathedral  of  St.  John  the  Divine  .    .  (initial)  107 

Among  the  Tenements;  Rivington  Street  (facing)  108 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

Manhattan  Bridge   (tailpiece)  123 

Wall  Street   (initial)  124 

The  City  Hall   (tailpiece)  134 

The  Shopping  Stretch  of  Fifth  Avenue    .  (initial)  135 

The  Heart  of  Chinatown   (tailpiece)  146 

The  Appellate  Court   (initial)  147 

The  Towers  of  Madison  Square     .    .    .  (facing)  150 

The  Farragut  Monument   (tailpiece)  157 

Statue  of  Petrus  Stuyvesant    ....  (initial)  158 

Studio  Buildings  in  East  19th  Street  .    .  (facing)  160 

Gramercy  Park  and  the  Players  Club  .    .  (facing)  164 

The  Oldest  House  in  New  York    .     .    .  (tailpiece)  167 

The  Old  Eleventh  Street  Corner    .     .    .  (initial)  168 

' '  The  Little  Church  Around  the  Corner ' '  .  (facing)  174 

The  New  York  Public  Library  ....  (tailpiece)  186 

St.  Patrick's  Cathedral   (initial)  187 

Forty-Second  Street  near  Fifth  Avenue  .  (facing)  190 

The  Metropolitan  Museum   (tailpiece)  204 

The  Grand  Central  Terminal    ....  (initial)  205 

The  Obelisk  in  Central  Park    ....  (facing)  210 

On  the  Park  Side  of  Fifth  Avenue  .    .    .  (tailpiece)  212 

Madison  Square  Garden   (initial)  213 

Classic  Pillars  of  the  Pennsylvania  Station  (facing)  216 

The  Hispanic  Museum   (tailpiece)  227 

A  Hester  Street  Corner   (initial)  228 

The  Lights  of  Broadway   (facing)  234 

The  Custom  House   (tailpiece)  240 

The  Corner  of  Broadway  and  Fifth  Avenue  (initial)  241 

The  College  of  the  City  of  New  York  .    .  (tailpiece)  257 

Grant's  Tomb   (initial)  258 

The  Beginning  of  Riverside  Drive  .    .     .  (facing)  260 

Columbia  University   (facing)  264 

The  Soldiers*  and  Sailors' Monument  .    .  (tailpiece)  267 

The  Van  Cortlandt  Mansion     ....  (initial)  268 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

The  Jumel  Mansion   (tailpiece)  279 

The  Statue  of  Hamilton  in  Central  Park  .  (initial)  280 

New  York  from  the  Bay   (tailpiece)  289 

Entrance  to  Prospect  Park   (initial)  290 

The  Brooklyn  Museum   (tailpiece)  301 

Staircase  in  the  Philipse  Manor  Hall  .     .  (initial)  302 

The  Hudson  near  Fort  Washington  .    .  (facing)  304 

Irving 's  Home,  Sunnyside   (tailpiece)  316 

The  Medieval  Effect  of  West  Point    .    .  (initial)  317 

West  Point  and  the  Highlands    .    .    .  (facing)  322 

The  West  Point  Chapel     ......  (tailpiece)  327 

The  Old  Moravian  Church  .    .    .    .    .  (initial)  328 

Billopp  House   (tailpiece)  342 

Old  Wrought-Iron  Newel  Posts  .  .  .  (initial)  343 
A  Bit  of  Greenwich  Village :    Milligan  Place 

  (facing)  346 

Comer  in  Old  Greenwich   (tailpiece)  356 

The  Benches  of  Washington  Square    .    .  (initial)  357 


Washington  Arch :  the  Gateway  of  Fifth  Avenue 

 (facing)  360 

Washington's  Words  in  Stone  ....    (tailpiece)  369 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


CHAPTER  I 


A  CITY  YOUNG  AND  OLD 


|INE  old  Frenchman  that  he  was, 
when  he  came  back  over  the 
ocean  to  ns  a  half  century  after 
his  youthful  advent,  Lafayette 
appreciated  to  the  full  the  finely 
delightful  qualities  which  he  rec- 
ognized in  the  character  of  our 
principal  city.  shall  love 

New  York,''  he  said;  Mon- 
sieur, I  shall  love  New  York  so 
well  that  I  may  never  be  able  to 
get  away  from  it!"  And  this 
'  ' '  expresses  the  keynote  of  New 

York,  its  magnetic  quality,  the  way  in  which  it  draws, 
attracts,  allures. 

He  who  writes  of  New  York  should  take  the  city 
seriously,  yet  not  too  seriously.  The  city  is  so  great, 
so  mighty,  so  tremendous,  in  population,  in  wealth, 

1 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


in  power,  in  achievements,  that  any  tendency  to  over- 
estimate should  be  checked,  that  every  claim  to  impor- 
tance should  be  carefully  weighed,  that  the  subtle 
danger  of  over-admiration  should  be  avoided.  That 
excellent  New  York  poet  of  long  ago,  Fitz-Greene 
Halleck,  felt  and  expressed  all  this  when  he  wrote : 

**And  on  our  City  Hall  a  Justice  stands: 
A  neater  form  was  never  made  of  board ; 
Holding  majestically  in  her  hands 
A  pair  of  steelyards  and  a  wooden  sword, 
And  looking  down  with  complaisant  civility — 
Emblem  of  dignity  and  durability." 

But  when,  with  every  tendency  to  yield  over-ad- 
miration or  over-importance  fully  in  hand,  one  looks 
at  New  York  seriously,  soberly,  with  intent  to  see 
only  what  is  fairly  to  be  seen,  it  is  seen  as  a  city  of 
immense  and  wide  interest. 

Far  more  than  any  other  city,  whether  of  the  past 
or  of  the  present,  New  York  is  one  that  is  both  young 
and  old.  Insistently  young,  vociferously  young,  ob- 
viously young,  it  at  the  same  time  displays  all  the 
qualities  of  maturity.  It  is  a  city  of  today,  yet  also 
a  city  of  three  centuries. 

This  marks  it,  among  cities,  more  than  does  any 
other  of  its  myriad  characteristics.  There  are  the 
vivid,  vital  evidences  of  youth,  the  fire  of  youth,  the 
strength  and  vigor  and  crudity  and  ruthlessness  and 
inconstancy  of  youth ;  it  is  a  city  as  new  and  as  crude 
as  the  newest  of  mining  towns  and  of  as  gay  an  irre- 
sponsibility :  yet  it  is  also  a  city  with  the  sadness,  the 
earnestness,  the  gravity,  the  solidity,  the  balance,  the 

2 


A  CITY  YOUNG  AND  OLD 


impressiveness,  of  age.  Eightly  seen,  its  chasmed 
streets  are  but  wrinkles  cut  by  the  years. 

Looking  at  the  tens  of  thousands  of  new  buildings, 
the  miles  and  miles  of  new-made  thoroughfares,  it  is 
the  very  newest  of  all  cities:  yet  it  is  also  one  that 
possesses  the  salt  and  the  savor  of  time.  One  needs 
but  remember  that  in  old  St.  Mark's  Church  there  lies 
buried  a  man  who,  of  powerful  influence  on  the  life 
and  development  of  this,  his  beloved  to^\m,  was  ruler 
here  while  the  long-ago  Thirty  Years'  War  was  rag- 
ing, was  born  when  Elizabeth  was  Queen  of  England 
and  while  Shakespeare  was  splendidly  in  mid-career. 

In  everything.  New  York  is  the  city  that  is  differ- 
ent. When  considering  Boston,  Philadelphia,  Chi- 
cago, San  Francisco,  it  is  customary  to  speak  of  what 
their  people  think  or  are  or  do,  but  no  one  ever  speaks 
thus  of  the  people  of  New  York,  but  only  of  the  city 
itself.  For  the  city  is  so  much  greater  than  its  peo- 
ple! With  New  York,  the  city  makes  the  people; 
elsewhere,  the  people  make  the  city. 

Always  it  has  been  a  restless  city;  and  Adrian 
Block,  who  built  the  first  handful  of  houses  here,  over 
three  hundred  years  ago,  and  here  built  and  launched 
the  first  vessel  built  in  America,  named  that  vessel  of 
Manhattan  the  Unrest,  as  if  with  a  touch  of  in- 
spired insight.  And  Verazzano,  who  was  here  long 
before  Block;  coming,  indeed,  in  the  reign  and  in  the 
service  of  him  of  **the  longest  nose  in  history,"  as 
the  New  Yorker,  Henry  James,  described  that  pic- 
turesque king,  Francis  the  First ;  also  saw  Manhattan 
with  the  eye  of  prophecy,  for  he  set  down  in  his  re- 

3 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


port  that  the  island  seemed  to  be  a  place  of  wealth! 
It  seemed  to  him  a  place  of  gold,  of  jewels,  of  furs — 
and  it  is  still  a  place  of  gold  and  of  jewels  and  of 
furs. 

Never  was  there  any  other  city  that  so  rapidly  and 
ruthlessly  tears  down  and  throws  away.  It  would 
seem  as  if  the  motto  of  New  York  were  Never  save 
for  tomorrow  what  can  be  destroyed  today!"  It 
builds  swiftly,  makes  immense  advances  swiftly,  but 
as  swiftly  destroys  what  it  has  built :  dwelling  houses 
and  business  buildings  that  have  gone  up  like  magic 
disappear  like  magic,  in  single  gaps,  in  rows,  in 
streets,  in  four-square  blocks.  Nothing,  however 
new  and  costly,  is  permitted  to  stand  for  a  moment 
in  the  path  of  public  or  private  improvement.  For 
new  thoroughfares,  for  burrowing  subways,  for 
bridge  approaches,  massed  houses  vanish;  and  other 
buildings,  in  number  innumerable,  vanish  that  there 
may  arise  triumphant  business  structures  or  apart- 
ment houses  such  as  elsewhere  the  world  has  never 
seen.  The  story,  cheerfully  typical,  is  told,  of  a  vis- 
itor of  note,  that  he  was  driven  uptown,  in  the  morn- 
ing, to  be  toasted  and  greeted  and  to  meet  some  of  the 
city^s  best,  and  that  in  the  afternoon  he  was  taken 
back  over  the  same  route  that  he  might  see  what 
changes  had  meanwhile  taken  place ! 

"When  New  York  is  referred  to,  whether  by  New 
Yorkers  themselves  or  by  others,  Manhattan  Island, 
or  the  Borough  of  Manhattan  as  it  is  now  officially 
known,  is  usually  meant,  although  there  are  also  the 
Boroughs  of  Brooklyn,  of  Queens,  of  Richmond,  of 

4 


A  CITY  YOUNa  AND  OLD 


the  Bronx,  within  the  limits  of  the  Greater  City.  In 
all,  it  is  estimated  that  now  the  population  is  more 
than  that  of  London;  that  Greater  New  York  leads 
the  world! 

Manhattan  is  an  Indian  word,  Americanized.  As, 
at  one  end  of  the  State,  the  softly  lilting  *'Neeaw- 
gawrah,''  with  its  accent  on  syllables  first  and  third, 
was  harshly  changed  to  *^Nyaggaruh,"  so,  at  this  end 
of  the  State,  the  **Manattan''  of  the  Indians,  without 
an  **h,*'  and  prettily  pronounced,  as  it  was,  with  its 
accent  on  syllable  one,  was  harshly  transformed  in 
accent  and  given  a  **hat'M — with  about  the  same 
effect  indeed,  as  that  of  putting  an  American  hat  on 
an  Indian  in  his  native  dress.  There  are  still  a  few 
Indians  in  the  region  of  the  James  River,  in  Virginia, 
where  John  Smith  and  Pocahontas  and  Powhatan 
played  their  drama  of  life  and  death,  and  I  have  heard 
them  speak  of  their  great  chief  of  the  past,  with  the 
easy  ripple,  accenting  syllable  one,  of  **Powattan," 
quite  discarding  the  **hat,''  as  Manhattan  Indians 
would  similarly  do  with  their  own  name,  were  there 
any  Manhattan  Indians  existent. 

Never  in  history  has  there  been  such  a  magnificent 
city.  It  draws  the  great  and  the  little;  the  masters 
of  finance,  of  railroads  and  manufacturing,  the  lead- 
ers in  law  and  surgery  and  authorship  and  art,  and 
millions  of  little  folk  as  well;  while  the  rest  of  the 
country  looks  on  jealously,  feels  jealous,  is  jealous — 
but  New  York,  when  she  thinks  of  them  at  all,  knows 
that  the  very  men  who  talk  depreciatingly  of  her  are 
getting  ready  to  come  to  her  by  the  next  train. 

5 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


More  and  more  of  the  wealth  of  the  world  centers 
here.  In  spite  of  misconceptions  which  come  from 
extravagant  statements,  whether  made  seriously  or 
as  witticisms,  New  York  is  a  safe  city,  a  city  to  which 
capital  gladly  comes  and  where  the  average  individ- 
ual lives  a  protected  and  happy  life.  Naturally  and 
inevitably,  there  is  temptation  where  there  is  such 
vastness  of  wealth;  naturally,  there  is  crime;  but  on 
the  whole,  for  those  who  wish  safety,  safety  comes 
as  a  matter  of  course. 

It  is  a  city  which  is  more  criticised,  by  its  own  peo- 
ple and  by  others,  than  any  other  city  in  the  world 
was  ever  criticised.  At  the  same  time  it  is  essen- 
tially so  great  a  city  that  not  only  is  every  New 
Yorker  proud  of  being  a  New  Yorker,  but  every  other 
American,  away  from  his  own  home  town,  no  matter 
what  that  town  may  be  or  how  dearly  he  may  honor  it, 
is  pridefully  titillated  if  taken  for  a  New  Yorker,  for 
the  very  name  carries  with  it  the  implication  of  alert- 
ness, of  power,  of  ability.  Whatever  is,  is  wrong,'' 
is  what  people  love  to  say  of  New  York,  yet  all,  no 
matter  how  reluctantly,  or  with  what  misgivings,  ad- 
mire its  might. 

That  it  should  develop  skyward  is  held  against  the 
city  as  one  of  the  most  common  reproaches ;  yet  this 
development  was  but  meeting  an  exigence  with 
sagacity.  Narrowed  closely  between  rivers  and  bay, 
and  thus  barred  from  the  usual  development  of  the 
usual  city,  sidewise  and  outward,  this  unusual  city 
found  its  natural  development  to  be  up  toward  the 
sky;  whereupon,  toward  the  sky  it  went,  with  thou- 

6 


A  CITY  YOUNG  AND  OLD 


sands  of  people  in  the  offices  of  single  structures,  and 
with  banks  of  elevators  of  from  five  to  thirty  or  so ; 
and  with  much  of  positive  beauty,  and  not  only  costli- 
ness, in  many  of  these  wonderful  office  buildings. 
The  streets  between  these  dizzy  heights  are  like  roads 
through  narrow  defiles  between  mountains.  I  have 
seen,  in  the  Alps,  the  white  summits,  far  above  me, 
aglow  with  the  splendor  of  sunset,  while  the  road  it- 
self was  darkened  by  the  gloom  of  evening,  and  I 
have  often  thought  of  this  when,  looking  up  from 
some  canyon  street  of  New  York,  where  the  shadows 
have  already  gathered,  I  have  seen,  far  above,  white 
towers  still  glowing  with  the  sunset  glory  of  purple 
and  gold. 

Fired  by  the  greatness  of  New  York,  Fernando 
Wood,  its  mayor,  in  1861  proposed  in  a  message  to 
the  Common  Council  that  it  should  secede  from  the 
Union  and  become  independent.  He  looked  upon  the 
secession  of  the  South  as  certain,  and  was  anxious 
that  New  York  emulate  and  outdo  the  glories  of  the 
long-ago  free  cities  of  Germany.  New  York,  im- 
perially alone,  was  to  be  the  wonder  of  the  world! — 
alone,  except  for  Staten  Island  and  Brooklyn,  which 
it  was  to  annex  and  then  to  take  the  name  of  Tri- 
Insula!  But  with  the  firing  on  Fort  Sumter  the 
proposal  of  Mayor  Wood  was  instantly  thrust  aside 
and  forgotten. 

New  York  is  a  kaleidoscopic  city,  an  active  city,  a 
city  with  the  touch  and  tang  of  leadership,  a  city  that 
has  always  welcomed.  Some  other  cities  receive  even 
the  most  worthwhile  newcomer  with  hesitation  and 

7 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 

doubt.  But  make  yourself  a  New  Yorker,  declare 
yourself  a  New  Yorker,  and  New  York  accepts  you, 
and  is  glad  to  have  you,  and  is  the  more  glad  the 
more  you  are  worth  the  having.  New  York  welcomes 
and  appraises,  whereas  in  some  of  the  other  Eastern 
cities  you  will  never  really  be  accepted,  no  matter 
how  wonderful,  how  able,  how  brilliant,  you  may  be ! 
If  you  would  advance  in  art,  in  letters,  in  business, 
New  York  treats  you  as  one  of  her  children;  if  you 
would  be  a  social  climber,  it  is  not  necessary  to  have  a 
family  tree  to  climb  by,  as  it  is  in  Boston  and  Phila- 
delphia. 

From  the  first,  New  York  has  been  cosmopolitanly 
planned.  From  the  first  it  has  stood  for  broad  toler- 
ance, and  has  welcomed  all  nationalities  and  all  be- 
liefs. As  early  as  1643,  so  it  has  been  stated,  there 
were  people  of  eighteen  nationalities  here. 

The  Dutch  set  a  broad  example  in  a  day  of  narrow- 
ness by  declaring  that  all  religious  sects  should  be 
treated  alike.  The  city,  then  a  tiny  place,  gave  shel- 
ter both  to  Roger  Williams  and  Anne  Hutchinson 
when  they  fled  from  New  England  persecution. 
Jesuit  Fathers,  fleeing  from  the  Indians,  were  wel- 
comed and  given  free  transportation  to  Europe. 
Hebrews,  with  wonderful  tolerance  for  that  early 
day,  were  admitted  to  citizenship  in  1657 — and  that  it 
was  really  so  wonderful  is  not  without  a  humorous 
suggestion  in  view  of  the  vast  number  of  Hebrews 
who  at  the  present  day  take  New  York  citizenship  as 
a  matter  of  course.  Intended  victims  marked  for 
death  by  the  witchcraft  delusion  fled  here  for  safety, 

8 


A  CITY  YOUNG  AND  OLD 


and  found  it ;  for  the  New  York  clergy,  while  those  of 
New  England  were  flaming  with  the  terrible  zeal  of 
religious  persecution,  gravely  resolved  that  **a  good 
name  obtained  by  a  good  life  should  not  be  lost  by 
spectral  accusation. ' ' 

A  city  of  amenities,  this  great  city  of  New  York! 
And  it  is  typical  of  the  influence  of  the  place  that 
when  a  letter  from  Washington  to  his  wife  is  inter- 
cepted by  the  British  and  sent  to  General  Howe,  he 
courteously,  from  his  headquarters  in  New  York, 
sends  it  back  to  Washington,  expressing  himself  as 
happy  to  return  it  without  the  least  attempt  having 
been  made  to  discover  its  contents.  And  some  time 
after  this,  we  find  Washington  sending  his  compli- 
ments to  General  Howe  in  New  York  and  doing  him- 
self the  pleasure  to  return  a  dog,  picked  up  by  some 
American  troops  and  having  the  name  of  General 
Howe  on  the  collar.  And  that  Washington  himself, 
who  began  his  Presidential  career  in  New  York, 
owned  dogs  of  such  names  as  Juno,  and  Mopsey  and 
Truelove,  would  alone  point  out  that  he  himself  was 
a  man  of  amenities,  a  very  human  and  a  very  likable 
man,  indeed. 

The  very  air  of  New  York  exhilarates.  This  is  no 
fancy,  but  a  very  literal  fact.  There  is  something 
extraordinarily  brisk,  active,  inspiring  about  it.  And 
it  is  not  only  New  Yorkers  who  notice  this,  but  vis- 
itors as  well.  have,''  wrote  Thackeray,  **an  ir- 
repressible longing  to  be  in  motion.  There  is  some 
electric  influence  in  the  air  and  the  sun  here  which  we 
don't  experience  on  our  side  of  the  globe.  People 

9 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


can^t  sit  still;  they  must  keep  moving.  I  want  to 
dash  into  the  street  now. '  * 

And  the  mention  of  Thackeray  is  remindful  that 
New  York  is  a  city  which  always  presents  the  possi- 
bilities of  adventure  of  one  kind  or  another;  for  that 
great  novelist  had,  in  New  York,  an  actual  adven- 
ture, such  as  his  great  rival  Dickens  fancied  in  imagi- 
nation as  happening  to  Pickwick!  For  Thackeray 
wrote  home  that,  after  a  dinner  at  Delmonico's,  he 
went  to  his  hotel  and  began  undressing,  only  to  be 
paralyzed  by  a  woman's  voice  in  the  alcove — for  he 
had  gone  into  a  second-floor  room  instead  of  his  own 
on  the  third!  tremble  when  I  think  of  it,''  he 
writes. 

Always  one  comes  back  to  the  idea  of  change,  as  a 
characteristic  of  New  York ;  and  the  very  seal  of  the 
city  is  curiously  typical  of  this.  On  it  there  still 
stands  an  Indian  with  his  bow — no  wonder  English- 
men come  to  New  York  to  hunt  Indians  on  Broadway ! 
(Before  passing  this  off  as  entirely  a  joke  it  is  well 
to  remember  that  one  so  recent  as  Ellen  Terry,  the 
actress,  has  set  down  in  her  memoirs  that  when  first 
she  sailed  for  New  York,  from  England,  it  was  with 
the  expectation  of  finding  the  men  wearing  red  flan- 
nel shirts  and  bowie  knives !)  And  still  there  stands, 
on  the  other  side  of  the  shield,  an  old-time  sailor,  in 
knee-breeches,  with  a  lead-line  in  his  hand  and  at  his 
shoulder  a  double  cross-staff  such  as  was  long  ago 
used  in  taking  observations,  and  such  as,  indeed,  was 
used  by  Hudson  himself  as  he  entered  the  harbor  of 
what  was  to  become  known  as  New  York. 

10 


A  CITY  YOUNa  AND  OLD 

Between  the  Indian  and  the  knee-breeched  sailor  is 
a  windmill.  A  few  windmills  far  out  on  Long  Island 
have  continued  to  represent,  into  this  twentieth  cen- 
tury, this  picturesque  feature  of  the  past,  but  it  is 
difficult  to  realize  that  windmills  were  ever  a  feature 
of  city  life,  here  on  Manhattan!  But  it  was  neces- 
sary to  have  some  kind  of  power  for  mills,  and  there 
was  no  stream  on  the  island  with  current  sufficient, 
and  so  it  was  that  windmills  naturally  came.  Tradi- 
tion still  hazily  tells  of  the  first  one  as  standing  just 
west  of  Broadway,  and  of  the  amazement  of  the  In- 
dians— something  like,  one  may  presume,  the  amaze- 
ment of  sophisticated  New  Yorkers  who,  wandering 
so  far  afield  as  toward  the  eastern  end  of  Long  Is- 
land, gaze  in  amazement  at  these  lingering  relics  of 
the  past. 

There  was  a  time  when  windmills  stood  on  Maiden 
Lane,  and  on  Cortlandt  Street  and  Park  Row,  and  at 
other  places,  and  they  show  prominently  in  early 
prints  of  the  city. 

The  barrels  on  the  seal  are  not  rum  barrels,  but  in- 
nocent flour  barrels,  for  an  important  industry  of 
early  New  York  was  the  milling  of  flour.  And  the 
two  beavers !  It  is  long  since  beavers  were  on  Man- 
hattan Island,  even  in  the  shape  of  finished  skins. 
In  early  days,  however,  the  island  was  thronged  with 
beavers  and  a  little  beaver  stream  gave  name  to 
Beaver  Street;  even  as  early  as  1626  one  ship  car- 
ried from  Manhattan  Island  to  Amsterdam  over 
seven  thousand  beaver  skins,  besides  the  skins  of 
otter,  mink  and  other  animals ;  and  by  1671  the  prov- 

11 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


ince  was  furnishing  over  eighty  thousand  beaver 
skins  annually. 

Immediately  above  the  shield  is  an  eagle ;  and  it  is 
certainly  long  since  an  eagle  fluttered  down  Broad- 
way !  In  fact,  one  sees  that  nothing  on  the  shield  is 
typical  of  the  present  day ;  that  these  things,  so  typi- 
cal of  the  past,  have  gone. 

Mrs.  Trollope,  mother  of  the  famous  Anthony, 
came  over  to  America,  almost  a  century  ago,  and 
wrote  a  book  of  the  most  narrow  and  unfair  animad- 
versions, but  in  one  respect  she  was  enthusiastic  about 
America;  she  immensely  admired  New  York. 

**My  imagination  is  incapable  of  conceiving  any- 
thing of  the  kind  more  beautiful  than  the  harbor  of 
New  York,"  she  wrote.  *^I  think  New  York  one  of 
the  finest  cities  I  ever  saw.  Situated  on  an  island, 
which  I  think  it  will  one  day  cover,  it  rises,  like 
Venice,  from  the  sea,  and  like  that  fairest  of  cities  in 
the  days  of  her  glory  receives  into  its  lap  tribute  of 
all  the  riches  of  the  earth. ' ' 

Lord  Bacon,  whose  scientific  mind  loved  to  revel  in 
details,  enumerated  among  the  things  that  ought  to  be 
seen  by  a  traveler,  the  courts  of  princes,  the  courts  of 
justice  in  session,  churches,  walls,  fortifications  and 
harbors,  antiquities  and  ruins,  libraries,  colleges, 
gardens,  warehouses,  horsemanship  and  fencing,  the 
training  of  soldiers,  plays,  treasuries  of  jewels  and 
robes,  and  in  conclusion,  whatsoever  is  memorable'' : 
and  it  seems  as  if  one  who  would  write  of  New  York 
should  place  himself,  so  far  as  possible,  in  the  position 

12 


A  CITY  YOUNG  AND  OLD 


of  Bacon's  traveler,  and  try  to  see  the  city  from  the 
traveler's  standpoint. 

And  one  likes  to  remember  the  words  of  Washing- 
ton Irving  when,  in  1832,  he  returned  from  Europe 
and  was  proudly  welcomed  by  his  city:  **Is  this 
not, ' '  he  said,  *  *  a  city  by  which  one  may  be  proud  to 
be  received  as  a  son!" 


13 


CHAPTER  II 


THE  GREAT  INDIFFERENT  CITY 


|ROM  early  years  the  greatness  and  fu- 
ture growth  of  New  York  were  recog- 
nized; and  over  a  century  ago 
the  streets  of  the  city  were 
mapped  out,  in  detail,  for  al- 
most the  entire  extent  of  Man- 
hattan Island. 

Never  was  there  a  more  amus- 
ing misconception  than  the 
often-repeated  one  that  the 
north  side  of  the  City  Hall  was  made  of  cheaper  ma- 
terial than  the  front  because  no  one  was  ever  ex- 
pected to  live  north  of  it  and  that  therefore  it  would 
never  be  seen,  for  before  the  City  Hall  was  built 
the  growth  of  the  city  northward  was  recognized. 

Commissioners,  appointed  to  map  out  the  streets 
for  the  population  of  the  future,  worked  on  the  task 
from  1807  to  1811,  and  produced  the  most  amazing 
prophecy  in  the  annals  of  any  city.  For,  after  all, 
New  York  was  then  but  small.  It  was  lusty  and 
vigorous  and  confident,  but  in  wellnigh  two  centuries 
of  existence  had  not  extended  thickly  for  much  more 
than  a  mile  from  the  Battery.    And  here  came  com- 

14 


THE  GREAT  INDIFFERENT  CITY 


missioners  who,  with  the  eye  of  faith,  saw  the  coming 
development  and  planned  out  streets  for  miles  and 
miles  to  the  northward,  over  land  that  was  then  but 
sparsely  dotted  with  tiny  villages  and  scattered  farm- 
houses, with  here  and  there  a  mansion.  They  ac- 
tually mapped  out  the  plan  of  the  city  to  155th  Street, 
inspired  by  the  basic  belief  of  the  time;  they  were 
prophets  inspired  by  the  sense  of  popular  confidence. 

But  they  were  not  poetical  prophets;  they  dis- 
cerned the  future,  but  they  met  the  situation  prosai- 
cally. They  did  not  attempt  charm  in  their  plan; 
there  was,  with  the  streets,  to  be  naught  of  circles 
and  crescents  such  as  those  of  Edinburgh  or  Bath, 
naught  of  great  and  ordered  vistas  or  of  avenues 
radiating  from  a  central  point,  as  one  sees  in  Paris 
or  as  had  even  then  been  begun  in  Washington.  They 
saw,  in  the  great  slim  water-girdled  city  of  the  future, 
a  problem  to  be  met,  not  prettily  but  prosaically; 
there  was  frankly  to  be  a  triumph  of  utilitarianism. 

They  themselves  realized  this.  They  discussed 
circles  and  stars  and  ovals  and  radiants,  but  then  set 
down,  stolidly,  that  **The  commissioners  could  not 
but  bear  in  mind  that  a  city  is  to  be  composed  prin- 
cipally of  the  habitations  of  men,  and  that  straight- 
sided  and  right-angled  houses  are  the  most  cheap  to 
build  and  the  most  convenient  to  live  in."  And  all 
the  artists  and  art  commissions  of  New  York  have 
never  been  able  to  get  over  the  result  of  their  work. 

Pick  up  the  map  which  they  made,  back  before  the 
War  of  1812,  and  you  will  think  that  you  are  looking 
at  a  map  of  today,  unless  you  notice  the  date,  and 

15 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


unless  you  notice  no  Central  Park,  and  that  Madison 
Square  was  to  be  much  larger  than  it  was  finally 
made,  for  their  plan  contemplated  the  extent  of  Madi- 
son as  from  23rd  to  34th  Streets  and  from  Third 
Avenue  to  Seventh,  to  give  ample  space  for  a  reser- 
voir of  water  and  for  the  gathering  and  training  of 
troops. 

They  felt  dubious  about  developing  above  155th 
Street,  where  the  lower  stretch  of  the  Harlem,  with 
its  marshy  flats,  was  reached.  In  time,  they  thought, 
a  still  farther  district  might  be  built  up,  but  that,  as 
they  said,  might  not  be  for  centuries.  But  so  far  as 
155th  Street  it  seemed  to  them  a  very  practical  prop- 
osition; and  this  at  a  time  when  the  city  had  not 
seriously  extended  beyond  City  Hall  Park  and  when 
little  Greenwich  Village  was  a  distant  and  separate 
place ! 

They  worried  somewhat  about  how  their  plan,  con- 
cretely expressing  the  city^s  vague  dream,  would  be 
taken;  some,  they  said,  would  expect  them  to  chart 
streets  even  beyond  155th;  to  others,  *'It  may  be  a 
source  of  merriment  that  the  commissioners  have 
provided  space  for  a  greater  population  than  is  col- 
lected at  any  spot  on  this  side  of  China'';  but  they 
bravely  set  forth  their  ideas,  gridironing  the  coming 
city  with  streets  all  at  right-angles. 

Practical  men  though  they  prided  themselves  on  be- 
ing, they  made  a  most  unpractical  blunder ;  a  mistake 
which  has  proved  to  be  both  awkward  and  costly. 
For  they  ought  to  have  known  that  the  proper  way 
to  develop  New  York  for  the  street  traffic  of  the 

16 


STAIRCASE  AND   ROTUNDA   OF  THE  OLD   CITY  HALL 


THE  GREAT  INDIFFERENT  CITY 


future  was  the  exact  contrary  of  their  plan :  that  in- 
stead of  having  a  few  avenues  running  lengthwise 
and  most  of  the  streets  running  crosswise,  it  should 
have  been  seen,  from  the  shape  of  the  island,  that  the 
future  traffic  would  need  more  highways  and  nearer 
together,  lengthwise,  north  and  south,  and  not  so 
many  near  together,  leading  east  and  west.  The 
gridiron  should  have  been  turned  sidewise.  If  there 
had  been  more  north  and  south  highways,  the  natural 
direction  of  the  city's  main  traffic,  the  congestion 
problem  would  have  been  avoided,  and  New  York 
would  not  have  had  to  meet  and  face,  as  it  is  still 
meeting  and  facing,  an  immense  expense  in  the  open- 
ing of  more  north  and  south  thoroughfares. 

When  the  city  came  to  the  matter  of  laying  out 
Central  Park,  a  half  century  later — for  thus  rapidly 
had  the  city  grown,  as  if  to  justify  the  early  confi- 
dence ! — men  of  an  unutilitarian  type  were  chosen  for 
the  work,  and  they  succeeded  beautifully.  They  were 
a  small  board,  consisting  of  the  Mayor,  two  other  city 
officials,  and  three  citizens;  and  what  a  three  those 
citizens  were ! — for  they  were  William  CuUen  Bryant 
the  poet,  and  George  Bancroft  the  historian,  and 
Washington  Irving!  And  the  plans  that  they  made 
and  set  in  motion,  or  which  they  in  their  noble  spirit 
inspired  landscape  artists  to  dream  of,  were  of  a 
kind  so  superb  as  to  give  New  York  one  of  the  finest 
parks  of  any  city  in  the  world,  with  wealth  of  water 
and  rocks,  and  diversified  heights  and  levels,  and 
greenery. 

New  York  has  quite  forgotten  that  it  ever  pos- 

17 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


sessed  Bancroft;  it  has  forgotten  that  it  possessed 
Bryant,  although  he  lived  for  some  time  at  24  West 
16th  Street,  and  for  a  longer  period  at  nearby  Roslyn, 
on  Long  Island.  And  that  it  has  not  forgotten  Irving 
is  an  exception  to  its  usual  indifferent  way. 

New  York 's  way  of  ignoring  even  her  greatest  folk, 
and  her  readiness  to  be  thoroughly  critical  when  she 
does  notice  them,  has  had  a  marked  effect  in  lessening 
the  value  of  her  historical  and  literary  associations  in 
the  public  mind.  Alexander  Hamilton  and  Washing- 
ton Irving  have  been  the  two  that  have  come  nearest 
to  receiving  her  whole-souled  and  continued  admira- 
tion, but  even  these  have  not  been  given  adulation 
approaching  the  adulation  customary  in  such  a  city  as 
Boston.  In  Boston,  a  man  of  ability  has  always  ex- 
pected to  be  taken  very  seriously,  and  has  always 
taken  himself  very  seriously.  Boston,  from  the  first, 
not  content  with  its  really  great  men  and  really  great 
events,  that  it  nobly  honors,  has  also  exploited  even 
the  tiniest  happenings  in  its  history,  and  has  pin- 
nacled even  second-rate  and  third-rate  men,  especially 
politicians  and  authors.  New  York,  going  to  the 
other  extreme,  has  taken  its  even  notable  events  and 
people  very  lightly.  Always,  its  tendency  is  to  think 
of  the  future  rather  than  of  the  past. 

Before  the  Revolutionary  clash  began.  New  York 
had  expressed  defiance  of  England — ^but  after  the  war 
was  over  forgot  to  talk  about  it !  In  January  of  1770, 
long  before  the  conflict  at  Lexington,  even  two  months 
before  the  so-called  Boston  Massacre,  men  of  New 
York  skirmished  with  the  British  on  Golden  Hill,  in 

18 


THE  GEEAT  INDIFFERENT  CITY 


the  vicinity  of  John  and  William  Streets,  following 
disputes  about  taxes  and  imposts  and  the  alternate 
setting  up  and  throwing  down  of  the  Liberty  Pole, 
and  here  on  Golden  Hill  several  lives  were  thus  early 
lost: but  when  the  war  was  over  New  York  made 
nothing  of  this  brave  event  in  its  history !  Yet  it  was 
a  notable  thing,  that  fight  on  Golden  Hill.  It  was  not 
a  thing  to  forget.  For  they  were  the  British  regulars 
that  the  New  Yorkers  fought,  and  the  blood  shed  was 
probably  the  first  blood  shed  in  the  War  of  the  Eevo- 
lution. 

Washington  Irving  was  born  in  this  Golden  Hill 
region,  in  a  house,  long  since  destroyed,  on  William 
Street,  between  John  and  I'ulton.  And  it  is  owing, 
in  considerable  degree,  to  Irving  that  New  York  has 
refused  to  take  itself  seriously ;  although  on  the  other 
hand  it  may  be  said  that  Irving  was  in  great  degree 
only  reflecting,  in  this,  the  spirit  of  his  native  town. 

For  Irving  wrote  a  history  of  New  York :  it  was  a 
humorous  book,  a  Knickerbocker  history,  as  he  called 
it,  thus  coining  that  delightful  word,  which  was 
promptly  adopted  as  meaning  old  families  of  Dutch 
ancestry,  and  then  also  as  meaning  short  trousers, 
after  Cruikshank  delightfully  illustrated  the  volume 
with  short-breeched  Dutchmen.  The  history  pleas- 
antly made  light  of  dignitaries  of  the  past,  and  its 
success  did  much  to  intensify  the  general  tendency  of 
the  city  toward  a  sort  of  chaffing  attitude,  although 
Irving  wrote  only  of  the  early  Dutch  regime. 

His  humorous  viewpoint,  his  refusal  to  take  digni- 
taries seriously,  was  adopted  in  the  general  viewpoint 

19 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


toward  any  sort  of  dignity  or  distinction.  Dutchmen 
seemed  funny  to  Irving,  and  he  expatiated  on  that 
feature,  emphasizing  the  size  and  quantity  of  their 
breeches,  and  the  length  of  their  pipes,  and  their  gen- 
eral deliberateness  of  conduct.  He  might,  had  he 
wished,  have  written  seriously  enough  of  even  the 
Dutch;  of  their  frightful  slaughter,  for  the  mere  lust 
of  killing,  of  a  hundred  or  so  friendly  Indians  who 
had  sought  shelter  on  Manhattan  from  war  parties  of 
Mohawks ;  he  might  have  written  with  much  gravity 
of  the  war  that  followed,  and  of  the  hiring  of  a  cer- 
tain New  Englander,  one  Underhill,  who  had  dis- 
played such  cold  cruelty  toward  New  England  In- 
dians that  the  Dutch  eagerly  paid  him  to  come  here 
to  manage  a  massacre,  near  what  is  now  Bedford, 
with  the  shooting  or  burning  of  some  five  hundred 
men,  women  and  children,  without  the  loss  of  a  single 
life  among  those  who  did  the  killing. 

But  Irving  frankly  laid  stress  on  the  light  and 
humorous  features  of  the  Dutch  and  their  times,  and 
the  humor  was  really  there  in  plenty,  and  he  made 
himself  and  New  York  famous  with  it,  even  abroad; 
Sir  Walter  Scott  read  his  Knickerbocker  book  and 
from  it  prophesied  Irving 's  coming  greatness,  and 
greeted  him  as  a  friend  and  literary  brother  when  he 
went  to  Abbotsf  ord. 

With  that  book,  early  in  his  career,  Irving  sounded 
the  natural  New  York  keynote  of  frivolousness  to- 
ward the  past,  and  helped  to  intensify  it.  It  was 
easy  to  encourage  indifference  in  the  great  growing 
indifferent  city  which,  though  at  times  ready  to  flare 

20 


THE  GREAT  INDIFFERENT  CITY 


into  enthusiasm,  quickly  forgets.  And  perhaps  New 
York  could  not  be  the  greatest  exponent  of  the  future 
if  she  permitted  herself  to  think  of  the  past. 

Irving  was  quite  capable,  when  he  chose,  of 
handling  historical  subjects  with  sober  dignity,  as  in 
his  life  of  Washington;  and  that  he  and  Washington 
once  met,  and  how  they  met,  is  among  the  prettiest 
of  all  the  incidents  of  New  York  history. 

Irving  was  born  in  the  year  which  marked  the  close 
of  the  Revolution,  1783,  and  therefore  his  first  name 
of  Washington  came  naturally;  and  in  1789,  Wash- 
ington, then  living  in  New  York  as  President  of  the 
United  States,  was  one  day  spoken  to,  in  a  shop,  by  a 
Scotch  maid,  who  modestly  called  his  attention  to  a 
little  boy  beside  her,  of  whom  she  was  in  charge ;  for, 
recognizing  Washington,  the  maid  wished  him  to 
know  that  the  lad  had  been  given  the  name  of  Wash- 
ington in  his  honor;  whereupon  the  tall  grave  man 
put  his  hand  on  little  Irving 's  head  and  said  a  few 
simple  words  of  good  wishes ;  and  one  knows  that  this 
chance  meeting  must  deeply  have  influenced  Wash- 
ington Irving  throughout  his  entire  life,  and  that,  no 
matter  how  excellent  a  man  he  would  in  any  case  have 
been,  it  must  have  aided  in  keeping  him  to  standards 
of  sweetness  and  honesty  and  kindliness :  and  never 
was  there  a  sweeter  and  kindlier  career  than  that  of 
Irving. 

He  is  directly  connected  with  New  York  City.  He 
lived  for  a  time  in  that  immensely  distinguished  line 
of  buildings,  with  great  long  front  of  huge  Corin- 
thian pillars,  on  Lafayette  Street  (once  Lafayette 

21 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 

Place),  known  as  Colonnade  Row,  which  had  been 
named,  at  first,  likewise  in  honor  of  Lafayette,  La 
Grange  Row.  The  Row  has  dwindled  in  recent 
years;  it  has  become  shorter  and  shorter  by  demoli- 
tion and  soon  it  must  all  vanish.  Long  ago  it  lost  all 
atmosphere  of  fine  living,  yet  here  wealthy  New 
Yorkers  dwelt,  and  in  one  of  the  houses  President 
Tyler  married  Julia  Gardiner  of  Gardiner's  Island, 
the  bit  of  land  just  off  shore  out  toward  the  end  of 
Long  Island  which,  granted  two  and  a  half  centuries 
ago  as  Gardiner's  Manor,  has  remained  the  only  un- 
broken manor  in  the  country,  for  its  extent  has  been 
neither  altered  nor  diminished  since  the  original 
grant;  and,  an  even  stranger  fact,  it  is  still  in  pos- 
session of  a  lineal  descendant  of  the  first  Gardiner. 
There  was  no  modest  shrinking  from  publicity  at  the 
Tyler-Gardiner  wedding!  It  was,  indeed,  an  exam- 
ple to  the  contrary;  for  after  the  ceremony  the  bride 
and  groom  were  driven  down  Broadway  behind  four 
white  horses  to  a  waiting  warship. 

Still  more  closely  associated  with  Irving  than 
Colonnade  Row  is  the  house,  still  looking  much  as 
when  he  lived  there,  on  Irving  Place,  at  the  corner  of 
17th  Street.  The  surroundings,  however,  have 
greatly  changed,  for  in  Irving 's  day  there  was  a 
great  open  space  stretching  off  toward  the  East 
River.  It  is  a  smallish  building  of  gray  brick,  three 
stories  and  a  basement  in  height.  Fronting  on  Irv- 
ing Place  are  pleasant  windows,  with  an  iron  balcony 
running  the  width  of  the  house,  and  a  slightly  pro- 
jective bay,  of  white  wood  supported  on  slender  iron 

22 


THE  GREAT  INDIFFERENT  CITY 


rods ;  the  entrance  to  the  house  being  by  iron  balus- 
tered steps  of  brown  stone  on  the  17th  Street  side. 
In  this  house,  and  even  more  in  his  charming  home  of 
Sunnyside,  up  the  Hudson,  Irving  delightfully  met 
the  finest  folk  of  his  day. 

Literary  fancies  change;  but  much  of  what  Irving 
wrote  is  still  as  fascinating  to  modern  taste  as  when 
he  wrote  it.  His  *'New  York,''  however,  makes,  in 
large  part,  hard  reading,  and  one  wonders  that  it  so 
delighted  his  period.  It  pleased  giants  as  well  as 
little  folk.  Not  only  was  the  general  public  de- 
lighted with  it,  and  Scott  delighted  with  it,  but 
Dickens  has  recorded  that,  coming  down  from  New 
Haven  to  New  York  by  boat,  he  cut  short  a  nap,  so  as 
not  to  miss  seeing  Hell  Gate  and  the  Hog's  Back  and 
other  localities  made  famous  by  the  Knickerbocker 
volume. 

Dickens  also  admired  the  other  work  of  Irving, 
that  which  is  still  so  fresh  and  so  altogether  charm- 
ing, and  when,  later,  he  came  down  the  Hudson  to- 
ward New  York,  he  looked  eagerly  for  all  the  locali- 
ties of  that  delightful  region,  made  famous  by  the 
writer  whom  every  one  loved. 

It  is  interesting  to  know  that  there  was  for  a  time 
a  pleasant  association  between  Irving  and  John 
Howard  Payne,  and  that  the  two  collaborated  in  the 
writing  of  a  play  called  Charles  the  Second,"  which 
has  usually  been  ascribed  to  Payne  alone,  and  which, 
after  being  acted  in  London,  was  presented  in  New 
York,  in  1824,  in  the  long  ago  vanished  Park  Theater, 
the  fashionable  theater  of  early  New  York,  which 

23 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


seated  twelve  hundred,  and  was  the  resort  of  the  best 
people  of  the  time  whenever  an  excellent  play  was 
given. 

That  the  author  of  **Home,  Sweet  Home"  was  a 
New  Yorker,  born  here  in  1791,  is  another  of  the  facts 
that  New  York  has  never  greatly  heeded. 

Joseph  Rodman  Drake,  who  died  in  1820  at  the  age 
of  twenty-five,  was  a  New  Yorker  who,  like  Irving, 
recognized  in  the  Hudson  River  a  pictorial  subject. 
He  wrote  the  lilting  rhymes  of  the  Culprit  Fay," 
which,  although  it  made  no  fixed  impression  in  litera- 
ture, was  notable  as  an  early  American  work. 

And  he  did  write  one  memorable  and  remembered 
thing,  his  *^Ode  to  the  American  Flag,"  with  its  ring- 
ing lines : 

*^When  Freedom  from  her  mountain  height 

Unfurl'd  her  standard  to  the  air, 
She  tore  the  azure  robe  of  night, 

And  set  the  stars  of  glory  there 

Drake  also  discovered  and  wrote  about  the  beauties 
of  the  Bronx,  long  afterwards  to  be  rediscovered  by 
F.  Hopkinson  Smith;  and  it  is  fitting  that  the  early 
poet  should  be  buried  in  that  region  that  he  loved,  in 
a  little  graveyard  now  included  within  a  park  that 
has  been  called  by  his  name. 

There  was  a  Damon  and  Pythias  friendship  be- 
tween Drake  and  another  New  Yorker,  Fitz-Greene 
Halleck,  both  of  whom  were  born  in  the  same  year 
and  both  of  whom  struggled  together  for  literary 
fame;  and  the  death  of  Drake  gave  the  sorrowing 

24 


THE  GREAT  INDIFFERENT  CITY 


Halleck  the  opportunity  that  he  would  only  too  gladly 
have  missed,  for  he  wrote,  in  memory  of  his  friend, 
some  never-to-be  forgotten  lines,  simple  and  touching 
in  their  measured  beauty: 

* '  Green  be  the  turf  above  thee, 

Friend  of  my  better  days ; 
None  knew  thee  but  to  love  thee, 

Nor  named  thee  but  to  praise. ' ' 

Halleck  also  made  other  contributions  to  fame, 
among  others  the  fiery  lines  beginning,  **At  midnight, 
in  his  guarded  tent.''  Recently,  picking  up  by  mere 
chance  a  book  of  selections  of  poetry,  published  in 
New  York  in  1840,  with  its  credit  of  this  or  that  poem 
to  Shelley  or  Shakespeare  or  Scott  or  whatever  Brit- 
ish writer  it  might  be,  I  noticed,  in  casually  turning 
the  pages,  that  Marco  Bozzaris''  was  there — but 
with  the  author's  name  quite  omitted!  He  was 
American;  he  was  a  New  Yorker;  why  should  he  be 
remembered  or  named ! 

Not  only  New  York  City,  but  the  country  in  gen- 
eral, ought  to  give  far  more  honor  to  our  early  au- 
thors than  it  is  customary,  except  in  the  case  of  a 
very  few,  to  give.  Leaving  an  author's  name  off 
altogether,  in  a  formal  collection,  is  not  usual,  but  it 
is  very  usual  indeed  to  depreciate  the  entire  early 
American  literary  school.  Even  such  writers  as  did 
not  do  work  that  is  to  live  forever,  did  at  least  aid  in 
giving  that  atmosphere  of  literature  and  art  without 
which  no  country  can  well  produce  artistic  or  literary 
masters. 

25 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


There  are  New  Yorkers  who  will  not  even  glance 
at  a  place  associated  with  Irving  or  Poe  or  Howells 
or  Mark  Twain  or  other  American  authors,  who  go 
obediently  about,  following  guide  or  guidebook,  pick- 
ing out  the  home  and  the  grave  of  this  and  that  New 
England  or  Old  England  writer,  even  of  such  as  can 
only  fairly  be  credited  with  what  may  be  called  good 
literary  intentions. 

Edgar  Allan  Poe  was  long  a  New  Yorker,  but  he 
was  an  unhappy  New  Yorker  indeed.  He  could  not, 
either  as  author  or  editor,  sufficiently  impress  him- 
self to  secure  practical  returns.  An  unbelievably 
few  dollars,  was,  as  a  general  thing,  the  extent  of  his 
literary  remuneration;  a  possible  five  or  ten  dollars 
always  loomed  large.  For  his  Raven,''  written 
when  he  was  a  New  Yorker,  he  seems  to  have  been 
paid  the  pitiful  sum  of  ten  dollars. 

He  lived  in  grinding  poverty  in  various  shadowily 
remembered  New  York  localities,  and  toward  the  end 
far  up  in  the  Fordham  district,  and  he  was  so  often 
without  money  to  pay  the  stage  fare  down  into  the 
city  that  he  frequently  walked  the  entire  distance  in 
lonely  discouragement.  Such  walks  as,  at  other 
times,  he  took  for  the  sake  of  walking,  were  usually 
at  night;  and  one  evening,  crossing  alone  on  the  foot- 
path over  the  lofty  aqueduct  over  the  Harlem  River 
— a  bridge  which,  seen  from  below  and  from  a  dis- 
tance, is  positively  beautiful,  with  its  row  of  tall  and 
symmetrical  arches — he  noticed  a  brilliant  star  di- 
rectly in  front  of  him,  whereupon  there  came  to  him 
the  inspiration  for  the  lines,  with  their  haunting 

26 


THE  GREAT  INDIFFERENT  CITY 


rhythm  and  swing,  about  the  star-dials  hinting  of 
morn,  their  liquescent  and  nebulous  luster,  their  be- 
diamonded  crescent.  After  all,  one  remembers  that 
Poe's  first  and  most  definite  standard  of  poetry  was 
that  it  be  musical. 

The  poor  little  Fordham  cottage  has  been  pre- 
served, although  not  quite  at  the  original  spot;  the 
city,  so  indifferent  to  Poe  himself,  has  at  least  kept 
his  cottage.  His  wife,  poor  thing,  died  there,  hungry 
and  cold;  she  used  to  try  to  keep  warm  in  bed  by 
cuddling  her  yellow  cat  against  her  bosom,  but  at  last 
even  a  cat  was  not  enough  to  sustain  life.  And 
Poe  himself  soon  wandered  away  from  this  great  in- 
different city  and  at  Baltimore  somberly  closed  his 
sorrowful  career. 

It  is  a  curious  thing,  in  regard  to  New  York^s  lit- 
erary history,  that  a  majority  of  its  early  notable 
leaders  were  poets.  In  such  an  eminently  practical 
city  as  this,  one  would  certainly  have  expected  prose. 
Irving,  indeed,  wrote  prose,  but  he  was  exceptional; 
and  even  his  prose,  until  he  was  well  on  in  his  career, 
was  of  gay  insouciance.  Poets  have  continued  to 
arise,  novelists  have  here  distinguished  themselves, 
short-story  writers  have  here  done  splendid  work — 
but  historians  and  philosophers  have  not  greatly 
flourished  in  Manhattan  soil. 

It  may  be  added,  too,  that  New  York  long  ago 
seized  the  literary  scepter  of  the  country  and  took  to 
itself  the  most  prominent  publications  and  most  of 
the  publishing  houses. 

In  the  great  and  even  vast  number  of  authors  who 

27 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


in  course  of  time  have  come  to  call  New  York  their 
home,  it  is  hard  to  pick  and  choose.  A  man  may, 
like  Howells,  write  with  skill  and  smoothness  and 
publish  book  after  book,  only  to  find  himself  not  pre- 
cisely deemed  among  the  few  to  be  marked  for  per- 
manent fame.  It  is  curious,  and  one  may  if  he  wishes 
deem  it  unfair,  but  so  it  is,  that  a  score  of  thick  novels 
may  be  thrust  aside  when  there  suddenly  appears,  let 
us  say,  a  thin-volumed  Colonel  Carter."  And,  too, 
Howells  has  always  seemed  to  consider  himself  more 
of  a  Bostonian  than  a  New  Yorker;  a  New  Yorker  by 
stress  of  circumstance,  but  still  a  Bostonian  by  choice. 

Henry  James,  too — ^well,  he  did  admirable  early 
work,  but  so  promptly  made  and  kept  a  resolve  to 
live  as  much  as  possible  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Atlantic,  even  long  before  he  formally  became  a  Brit- 
ish subject,  that  perhaps  he,  too,  need  not  be  looked 
upon  as  a  New  Yorker.  One  is  tempted  to  think  that 
the  most  interesting  of  his  associations  with  his  na- 
tive city  is  the  fact  that,  as  a  small  boy,  he  saw  Thack- 
eray, when  the  great  Englishman  was  a  dinner  guest 
at  his  first  New  York  dinner,  at  the  home  of  little 
Henry's  father. 

And  perhaps  the  best,  or  at  least  the  cleverest, 
commentary  on  the  works  of  Henry  James,  intricate 
and  involved  as  he  allowed  his  style  to  become,  with 
interminable  length  of  sentences,  was  that  of  the 
witty  New  Yorker  who  announced  that  a  new  serial 
by  Henry  James  was  about  to  begin,  and  that  the 
opening  sentence  was  to  be  continued  through  six 
numbers. 

28 


THE  GREAT  INDIFFERENT  CITY 


At  the  time  I  write,  Richard  Harding  Davis  and  F. 
Hopkinson  Smith,  both  of  them  now  dead,  loom  the 
most  prominent  as  New  York  writers,  or  at  least  as 
the  most  prominent  among  those  who  have  not  only 
done  distinguished  work  in  broad  fields  but  who  also 
have  best  presented  the  character  and  the  life  of  the 
city  itself. 

But  this,  probably  enough,  will  not  be  permanent. 
Not  so  long  ago,  Crawford  was  deemed  the  most 
notable  of  this  class.  Before  that,  and  especially  as 
exponents  of  New  York,  came  Bunner  and  Sidney 
Luska — but  Sidney  Luska  is  quite  forgotten  now, 
and  Bunner,  with  all  his  bubbling  cleverness,  is  with 
difficulty  kept  in  mind.  Still  further  back  there  was 
Winthrop ;  now  and  then  you  will  still  hear  some  old- 
fashioned  New  Yorker  speak  of  him;  but  Winthrop 
died  in  the  Civil  War,  and  somehow  his  work  seemed 
to  die  then  too;  not  entirely  without  reason,  either, 
if  one  may  judge  from  his  inept  description  of  de- 
lightful Washington  Square,  as  *^a  dreary  place, 
drearily  surrounded  by  red  brick  houses  with  marble 
steps  monstrous  white,  and  blinds  monstrous  green.'' 

F.  Hopkinson  Smith  should  be  remembered,  among 
other  reasons,  for  so  breezily  pointing  out  that,  in  a 
New  York  apartment-house  room  without  a  chimney, 
it  is  quite  possible  to  put  both  a  fireplace  and  a  chim- 
ney, and  to  have  friends  gather  there  in  conf abulative 
happiness  in  front  of  a  blazing  fire,  the  ideal  of  **four 
feet  on  a  fender."  And  he  loved  to  point  out  that 
even  in  the  heart  of  New  York  there  may  be  the 
gleam  of  old  mahogany,  there  may  be  the  shining 

29 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


glow  of  lights  from  old  brass  andirons,  there  may  be 
a  glorious  sideboard,  there  may  be  the  lovely  blue  of 
old  china,  there  may  be  the  silver  sheen  of  ancient 
stately  candlesticks. 

To  the  very  end  of  his  long  life  he  kept  all  the  en- 
thusiasm of  youth.  How  every  one  loves  his  Colonel 
Carter !  I  remember  his  telling  me  that  in  essentials 
he  was  picturing  in  this  character  his  own  father; 
and  it  touched  him  to  know  that  he  had  made  his 
father  so  loved.  He  was  describing  a  real  house,  in 
that  story,  on  West  10th  Street,  at  w^hat  was  58%, 
behind  58,  near  Sixth  Avenue,  but  only  a  trace  of  it 
now  remains.  And  it  is  sorrow^ful  to  think  that  in 
this  great  indifferent  city  there  may  before  long  be 
only  a  trace  of  the  fame  of  Hopkinson  Smith  him- 
self. 

That  New  York  so  rapidly  forgets  and  so  fre- 
quently ignores  is  quite  typical  of  a  deep-based 
trait :  that  is,  that  New  York  is  a  city  entirely  with- 
out self -consciousness ;  it  is  so  sufficient  unto  itself  as 
not  to  be  sensitive  in  the  least  about  its  dignity  or  its 
reputation,  or  to  care  what  people  think  or  say  or 
write  about  it. 

As  a  world  center,  it  must  needs  be  that  New  York 
is  greater  than  any  of  its  people ;  and  it  carries  this 
feature  to  an  extreme  undreamed  of  in  other  world 
centers.  The  individual,  no  matter  how  tow^ering,  no 
matter  for  a  time  how  dominant,  finds  his  importance 
to  be  little  compared  with  that  of  the  city  itself.  It 
is  a  city  which  treats  individuals  as  the  ocean  treats 
drops  of  water.    New  York  does  not,  like  other  cities, 

30 


THE  GREAT  INDIFFERENT  CITY 


claim  great  men ;  she  expects  great  men  to  claim  New 
York!  And  over  and  over  again  one  notices  how 
carelessly  she  forgets. 

Already  New  York  has  practically  forgotten  that 
President  Grant,  up  at  3  East  66th  Street,  wrote  the 
greater  part  of  his  Memoirs,  under  immense  financial 
and  physical  stress,  with  the  shadow  of  death  creep- 
ing over  him.  The  city  has  quite  forgotten  that 
President  Arthur  died  at  123  Lexington  Avenue. 
Still  more  amazing  is  it  that  New  York  long  ago 
quite  forgot  the  birthplace  of  Roosevelt,  although  the 
unusual  personality  of  the  man  and  his  having  been 
President  for  two  terms  would,  one  should  suppose, 
have  kept  the  house  an  object  of  constant  interest. 
As  I  write,  it  has  just  been  destroyed;  it  was  at  28 
East  20th  Street;  and  for  a  long  time  before  its  de- 
struction it  stood  drearily  unoccupied,  though  a  res- 
taurant had  for  a  time  been  there,  and  it  bore  in  its 
window  an  invitation,  so  unintentionally  humorous 
as  almost  to  be  pathetic,  to  *  *  Come  in  and  eat  where 
Roosevelt  was  born." 

New  York  has  quite  forgotten  that  he  of  the  famous 
Monroe  Doctrine,  President  Monroe,  came  to  New 
York  toward  the  close  of  his  life  and  died  here  in 
1831:  fittingly,  too,  on  the  Fourth  of  July,  as  with 
two  other  Presidents,  Jefferson  and  John  Adams. 

His  home  here  was  an  old  house,  still  standing,  at 
63  Prince  Street  at  the  corner  of  Lafayette.  It  is  a 
house  of  brick,  once  red  but  now  weatherbeaten  to 
dreary  dinginess,  a  house  with  charming  fanlights 
and  high  stoop  and  pleasant  dormers  and  capacious 

31 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


gables,  with  high  ceilings,  with  well-designed  door- 
frames and  eight-paneled  doors;  but  it  is  now  a 
wreck,  \sdth  the  great  blue  sign  of  a  ragman  upon  its 
center  and  signs  of  **For  Sale''  on  either  side. 

It  seems  incredible,  that  the  fact  could  be  forgot- 
ten by  any  city,  that  the  author  of  the  declaration 
which  for  a  century  influenced  the  world,  the  declara- 
tion as  to  entangling  ourselves  in  the  broils  of 
Europe,  or  suffering  the  powers  of  the  old  world  to 
interfere  with  the  affairs  of  the  new,"  once  made  the 
city  his  home.  Forgotten,  too,  is  the  fact  that  his 
body  remained  in  the  Marble  Cemetery,  far  over  on 
East  Second  Street  beyond  Second  Avenue,  until 
1858,  when  it  was  taken  to  Eichmond  at  the  request 
of  the  State  of  Virginia. 

The  old  cemetery,  high  iron-fenced  in  front  and 
high  brick  walled  behind,  is  still  sedate,  composed, 
with  an  air  of  quiet  breeding,  and,  situated  though  it 
now  is  in  the  midst  of  tenement  surroundings,  has 
succeeded  by  its  silent  influence  in  maintaining  a  gen- 
eral air  of  quiet  and  neatness  and  cleanliness  in  the 
adjacent  buildings,  even  though  the  ones  whose  rear 
windows  open  upon  its  old-fashioned  space  are 
a-flutter  with  vari-colored  washing. 

Not  to  be  confounded,  this  graveyard,  with  another 

Marble  Cemetery,"  so  called,  near  by,  entered 
through  a  tunnel-like  entrance  at  41%  Second  Ave- 
nue; in  this  other  Marble  Cemetery,  little  and  now 
hidden  away,  there  having  been  buried  some  1500  in 
all,  many  of  them  from  the  most  prominent  families, 
as  would  be  expected  from  a  most  curious  and  now 

32 


THE  GREAT  INDIFFERENT  CITY 

almost  undecipherable  inscription,  that  it  was  in- 
tended as  **a  place  of  interment  for  gentlemen. 
Mohammed  planned  a  heaven  for  men ;  but  left  it  for 
New  York  to  plan  a  gentlemen's  cemetery! 


33 


CHAPTER  III 

DOWN  AT  THE  BATTEEY 


HEN  New  York  a  few  years 
ago  wished  to  celebrate  the 
completion  and  opening 
of  its  first  subway,  and 
wished  to  do  it  in  a  style 
commensurate  with  the 
city's  greatness,  the 
mayor  suggested  that  ev- 
ery bell  and  whistle  should 
sound  in  unison  for  one  hour;  a  great  and  prolonged 
din  being  supposedly  representative  of  New  York 
City  and  most  fitting  for  the  celebration  of  a  tre- 
mendous achievement!  And  New  York  is  indeed  a 
city  of  noise — but  the  noise  is  the  rattle  and  thunder 
and  turmoil  of  traffic ;  it  is  not  noise  from  choice  but 
from  necessity. 

And  there  are  still  several  places  in  Manhattan 
where  there  is  almost  quiet,  one  of  these  being  down 
at  the  lower  point  of  the  island,  the  Battery,  where 
still  there  is  a  peaceful  area  of  park,  almost  undis- 
turbed by  din. 

George  Washington,  when  as  President  he  lived  in 
this  city,  found  his  favorite  walk  to  be,  as  he  has  re- 

34 


DOWN  AT  THE  BATTERY 


corded  in  his  diary,  along  the  sea-wall  of  the  Battery. 
And  Aaron  Burr,  after  the  loss  of  Theodosia,  the 
daughter  whom  he  worshipped,  used  to  pace  back  and 
forth,  back  and  forth,  along  this  sea-wall,  looking 
hungrily  toward  the  Narrows  in  the  never  to  be  ful- 
filled hope  that  a  ship  should  appear  bearing  the 
one  who  had  so  mysteriously  vanished  at  sea. 

The  sea-wall  is  still  one  of  the  finest  walks  in 
the  city.  The  land  projects  a  little  further  into  the 
Bay  than  it  used  to  do,  and  the  walk  has  therefore 
been  advanced  a  little,  but  it  is  still  almost  identically 
the  same  as  of  old ;  it  is  a  walk  of  buoyancy  for  those 
who  can  feel  buoyant,  with  its  tang  of  the  sea  and  its 
tingling  breezes,  and  for  the  unhappy,  like  Burr,  there 
are  days  of  breezeless  gloom,  when  the  water  seeps 
and  sighs  along  the  edge.  To  walk  there  is  to  walk 
in  a  place  of  memories. 

A  beautiful  approach  to  the  Battery  is  from  the 
Bay,  on  a  day  of  sunlight,  when  there  is  a  glowing 
blue  of  water  and  of  sky,  and  the  ceaseless  movement 
of  numberless  boats.  On  either  side  there  is  the  gen- 
tly sloping  shore  of  Long  Island  or  of  New  Jersey ;  in 
front,  on  the  left,  is  the  great  green  Goddess  of  Lib- 
erty; on  the  right  are  the  mighty  curves  of  the 
bridges ;  in  the  center,  set  in  the  midst  of  blue  water, 
beneath  the  blue  dome  of  the  sky,  there  rises  a  clus- 
tering mass  of  buildings  to  incredible  and  irregular 
heights,  in  whites  and  grays  and  dark  browns,  with 
splashes  of  red  and  green.  And  in  front  of  this  clus- 
tered mass  is  the  park  of  the  Battery. 

There  is  dignity  in  the  view,  there  is  strength,  there 

35 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


is  superb  impressiveness,  there  is  the  unexpected  gen- 
tleness of  greenery. 

In  the  early  hours  of  a  winter's  evening,  when  the 
myriad  boats  show  lights  of  green  and  white  and  red, 
and  Liberty  stands  in  a  soft  and  whitish  glow,  and 
the  interminable  lines  of  cars  move  over  the  arching 
bridges  like  fireflies  on  fairy  threads,  and  the  tower- 
ing buildings  are  alight,  in  thousands  of  windows, 
giving  an  etf ect  as  of  a  wonderful  hill  city  with  lighted 
houses  rising  tier  on  tier,  higher  and  higher,  it  is 
one  of  the  striking  sights  of  the  world. 

Washington,  when  in  the  long  ago  he  walked  the 
Battery  walk,  would  have  been  keenly  interested  could 
he  have  known  that,  a  quarter  of  a  century  after  his 
own  death,  his  beloved  friend  and  associate  Lafayette 
was  to  be  received  here  at  the  Battery  by  enthusiastic 
New  Yorkers. 

It  was  in  1824  that  the  Frenchman  came  back  to  re- 
visit America.  Most  of  the  men  of  the  Eevolution 
were  then  dead,  and  he  did  not  know  he  had  won  a 
profound  love  in  the  hearts  of  all  Americans.  But 
he  wanted  to  see  once  more  the  country  for  which  he 
had  given  his  best  efforts  and  where  the  most  inter- 
esting years  of  his  interesting  life  had  been  spent. 

The  changes  in  France  had  left  him  far  from  rich, 
and  he  was  disturbed  about  what  would  be  the  ex- 
penses here.  On  the  way  over  he  talked  candidly 
with  a  Boston  merchant,  a  fellow  passenger,  about 
the  cost  of  hotels  and  travel;  and  he  accepted  the 
Bostonian's  invitation  to  dinner  when  he  should 
reach  that  city. 

36 


DOWN  AT  THE  BATTERY 


He  expected,  on  the  whole,  to  drift  inconspicuously 
through  the  country.  And  when  his  ship  reached  New 
York  and  he  found  the  Bay  filled  with  ships  a-flutter 
with  flags  and  with  their  yards  manned  with  lines  of 
sailors,  all  in  his  honor;  when  he  saw  flags  in  every 
direction,  on  the  water  and  on  the  shores,  and  when  he 
heard  the  roar  of  cannon  and  the  ringing  of  bells ;  he 
wept  with  the  pathetic  surprise  of  it  all. 

He  landed  at  the  Battery — and  collectors  prize  the 
old  blue  plates  that  picture  his  ship,  the  Cadmus,  and 
Castle  Garden,  as  it  came  afterwards  to  be  called, 
which  was  then  a  fort  separated  from  the  mainland 
by  a  narrow  strip  of  water;  a  fort  of  that  old  cheese- 
box  order  of  architecture  which  for  so  long  a  time 
appealed  to  army  engineers.  Here  Lafayette  was 
welcomed,  and  thence  was  driven  to  the  City  Hall, 
cheered  by  uncounted  thousands  on  the  streets  and  on 
the  very  roofs.  And  after  that,  throughout  America, 
he  found  himself,  wherever  he  went,  the  honored 
guest  of  nation  or  state  or  city  or  town — and  there 
was  no  need  to  think  of  hotel  expenses!  And  it  is 
pleasant  to  know  that  when  he  reached  Boston  he 
took  time  from  the  rush  of  grand  receptions  to  look  up 
the  Bostonian  and  dine  with  him  as  he  had  promised 
to  do. 

Years  after  this,  the  city  welcomed  Admiral  Dewey, 
here  at  the  Battery,  when  he  came  sailing  home  from 
Manila,  bearing  his  honors  thick  upon  him ;  though  it 
is  amusing  to  remember  what  panic  he  put  into  the 
hearts  of  the  committee  of  reception  by  arriving  one 
day  sooner  than  was  planned.    However,  like  the 

37 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


genial  gentleman  that  he  was,  he  postponed  his  land- 
ing until  everything  should  be  prepared.  I  saw  him, 
close  by,  as  he  stepped  ashore,  and  never  was  there 
a  more  simple,  more  attractive,  more  unpretentious, 
more  capable-looking  American.  He  was  given  a 
more  than  royal  welcome,  and  a  parade  in  his  honor 
was  resplendent  in  glitter  of  banners  and  arms,  and 
was  of  immensity  of  length. 

At  the  very  edge  of  the  sea-wall,  over  at  one  side 
of  Battery  Park,  still  stands  old  Castle  Garden,  as  it 
was  for  many  years  known.  It  was  long  the  receiv- 
ing station  for  immigrants,  before  that  it  was  used  as 
a  hall  for  amusements,  celebrations  and  public  recep- 
tions, originally  it  was  a  fort  (not  the  first  fort  here 
at  the  Battery,  but  built  just  before  1812),  and  now 
it  is  the  city 's  Aquarium. 

Perhaps  it  was  never  of  attractive  shape ;  certainly 
it  has  with  the  passage  of  years  been  altered  out  of 
any  degree  of  attractiveness  that  it  may  have  had  in 
the  past,  although  some  of  the  old  casemates  are  still 
preserved.  It  is  a  squatty,  sprawling,  many-sky- 
lighted building,  with  huge  cupolas,  a  building  neither 
round  nor  square  nor  octagon,  but  somehow  suggest- 
ing each  of  these  shapes. 

Jenny  Lind 's  first  American  concert  was  given  here, 
and  stories  have  come  down  about  the  marvelous  in- 
terest and  enthusiasm  that  she  aroused.  That  first 
concert  gave  for  her  share  twelve  thousand  dollars 
which  entire  sum  she  promptly  turned  over  to  charity. 
For  that  first  concert  Barnum  offered  a  prize  of  two 
hundred  dollars  for  the  best  song  for  her  and  there 

38 


DOWN  AT  THE  BATTERY 


were  seven  hundred  competitors,  and  Bayard  Taylor 
won  the  prize.  On  the  night  of  the  first  concert,  peo- 
ple who  had  been  unable  to  buy  seats  stood  in  throngs 
on  the  water-front  or  filled  the  host  of  boats  that  were 
rowed  as  near  as  possible  to  the  outside  of  the 
building. 

It  is  one  of  the  amusing  memories  of  the  Battery, 
that  at  the  time  when  Barnum  was  exhibiting  the  once 
well  known  Cardiff  Giant,  at  Castle  Garden,  he  was 
apparently  so  fearful  lest  some  one  might  get  at  it, 
that  every  night,  after  the  performance  was  over,  he 
had  the  supposedly  petrified  man,  a  heavy  load,  borne 
across  this  Battery  space  to  the  old  Eastern  Hotel  (a 
house  built  before  1790  and  only  recently  destroyed, 
at  the  corner  of  Whitehall  and  South  Streets),  where 
he  kept  a  room  for  the  ostensible  safeguarding  of  his 
stone  man. 

Near  the  Aquarium  is  a  spirited  bronze  bust  of 
Verazzano,  and  it  shows  him  as  the  possessor  of  a 
nose  as  long  as  that  of  his  royal  master  Francis. 
Here  at  the  beginning  of  Broadway  is  a  monument  to 
an  Italian  explorer  in  the  service  of  France,  and  sev- 
eral miles  to  the  northward,  at  what  was  until  lately 
deemed  the  other  end  of  Broadway,  is  a  monument  to 
that  still  more  famous  Italian  who  made  his  explora- 
tions in  the  service  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella. 

At  the  opposite  side  of  the  open  space  from  the 
Aquarium,  just  where  the  park  curves  into  State 
Street,  is  a  house.  Number  7,  which  has  figured  in  one 
of  Bunner^s  stories,  **A  New  York  House,"  and  which 
instantly  attracts  attention  from  its  unusual  and  dis- 

39 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


tinguished  appearance.  It  was  built  shortly  before 
the  year  1800  by  a  New  York  merchant  whose  wife 
was  connected  with  a  governor  of  Connecticut  and 
with  President  Dwight  of  Yale ;  which  facts  were  very 
important  in  early  days  when  the  Battery  houses  were 
social  centres.  Those  people  never  supposed  that  the 
house  would  ever  become  a  home  for  immigrant  girls. 
It  is  fronted  by  two  sets  of  pillars,  one  set  being 
round  and  the  other  square;  and  there  is  a  recessed 
balcony  on  the  level  of  the  second  floor. 

When  the  occupant  of  1804  moved  away — a  certain 
Colonel  Van  Vredenburgh,  who  had  served  in  the  Rev- 
olution— he  loaded  his  furniture  into  a  boat  at  his 
front  door,  and  then,  he  and  his  family  stepping  in 
after  the  furniture,  they  started  on  their  journey  far 
up  the  Hudson,  to  a  new  home  in  the  Mohawk  Val- 
ley :  where,  it  somehow  seems  interesting  to  know,  this 
man  of  the  Battery  became  known  among  the  Indians 
as  *^The  Great  Clear  Sky." 

Immediately  to  the  northward  of  Battery  Park, 
where  it  opens  into  the  Bowling  Green,  is  the  begin- 
ning of  Broadway.  At  the  right,  as  you  face  toward 
this  beginning,  is  the  great  gray  Custom  House,  roofed 
in  dull  red,  and  at  the  left  is  a  higher  building  of  red 
brick  with  a  roof  in  black  and  green.  Between  these 
two  buildings,  beyond  the  Bowling  Green,  begins  a 
mighty  chasm,  incredibly  narrow,  incredibly  deep  and 
high,  a  chasm  in  grays  and  browns  and  whites  with 
slashes  of  greens  and  reds.  It  is  a  great  long  gash 
among  buildings,  it  is  a  canyon  profound  in  its  depth, 
it  is  a  long  valley  with  vertical  stone  walls  rising  to 

40 


DOWN  AT  THE  BATTERY 


great  and  irregular  heights  and  peaks  and  ledges.  It 
is  a  valley  deeper  and  more  precipitous  than  the  gorge 
of  the  Trossachs,  and  it  only  waits  a  Walter  Scott  of 
business  to  picture  there  some  tragic  or  dramatic 
scene. 

The  pleasant  oval  of  the  Bowling  Green — which  was 
really  once  a  bowling  green  and  has  for  generations 
preserved  this  oval  shape — surrounded  by  its  iron 
fence,  is  remindful  of  one  of  the  romantic  episodes 
of  New  York  history;  an  episode  which  has  already 
become  almost  a  myth.  And  to  tell  of  this  it  is  neces- 
sary to  drop  back  a  little  into  the  past. 

Following  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act,  the  New 
York  Assembly  voted,  in  its  enthusiasm,  to  set  up  a 
statue  of  King  George  the  Third  and  a  statue  of  Wil- 
liam Pitt,  whereupon  the  statue  of  William  Pitt  was 
set  up  in  Wall  Street  and  that  of  the  King  in  the  cen- 
ter of  the  Bowling  Green. 

This  kingly  statue  was  equestrian  and  was  set  up 
on  a  date  which  shows  how  ingrained  was  the  intense 
feeling  for  royalty  even  up  to  the  verge  of  the  Eevo- 
lution.  For  it  was  August  21,  1770 — and  although  in 
a  short  five  years  there  were  to  be  Lexington  and 
Concord  and  Bunker  Hill,  the  people  were  still  so  in- 
fatuated with  royalty  as  to  honor  this  birthday  date 
of  that  Prince  of  Wales,  who,  dying  before  his  father, 
and  thus  missing  the  throne,  left  only  the  memory 
that  he  was  the  son  of  King  George  the  Second  and  the 
father  of  King  George  the  Third,  and  that  he  was  de- 
scribed in  the  lines,  surreptitiously  quoted  and 
laughed  about  in  England : 

41 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


**Here  lies  Fred, 

Who  was  alive  and  is  dead. 
Had  it  been  his  father, 

I  had  much  rather. 
Had  it  been  his  brother, 

Still  better  than  another. 
Had  it  been  his  sister. 

No  one  would  have  missed  her. 
Had  it  been  the  whole  generation. 

Still  better  for  the  nation. 
But  since  'tis  only  Fred, 

Who  was  alive  and  is  dead. 
No  more  need  be  said.'' 

The  statue  of  Pitt  was  destroyed  by  angry  British 
soldiers  in  the  course  of  their  occupancy  of  New  York, 
but  a  fragment  has  been  preserved  and  is  in  the  rooms 
of  the  city's  Historical  Society;  but  before  that  on  a 
July  night  in  1776  the  Americans  themselves  had  de- 
stroyed the  statue  of  the  King.  It  was  in  place  when 
the  sun  went  down,  and  when  the  morning  came  it  had 
vanished. 

Few  knew  until  long  afterwards  what  became  of 
it.  It  was  taken  to  Litchfield  in  Connecticut,  far  up 
in  the  delightful  hill  country,  and  there,  as  it  was  of 
lead,  it  was  made  into  bullets.  And  a  record  left  by 
Oliver  Wolcott,  one  of  the  signers  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  and  afterwards  a  general  and  a  gov- 
ernor, tells  who  made  the  bullets  and  how  many  were 
made. 

A  shed  was  built  in  the  Wolcott  orchard,  and  the 
statue,  first  chopped  and  melted  in  the  kitchen, 
was  made  into  bullets  by  women  and  girls  of  the  best 

42 


DOWN  AT  THE  BATTEEY 


blood  and  social  position.  Laura  Wolcott  made  8378 
cartridges;  Mary  Ann  Wolcott  made  still  more,  for 
lier  total  was  10,790 ;  a  neighbor,  Mrs.  Marvin,  made 
6058 ;  Frederick  Wolcott,  a  lad  permitted  to  work  with 
the  women  at  the  interesting  task,  made  936 ;  a  Mrs. 
Beach  made  2002 ;  others  made  amounts  various ;  and 
the  total  was  42,088  cartridges  made. 

How  and  by  whom  the  cartridges  were  used  has  not 
been  recorded,  except  as  to  some  minor  items,  such 
as  the  giving  of  300  to  the  regiment  of  a  Colonel  Wig- 
glesworth — delightful  name! — and  the  giving  of  sev- 
eral hundred  to  a  Colonel  Howe,  and  of  fifty  to  the 
Litchfield  militia  on  the  occasion  of  an  alarm. 

The  ancient  house  still  stands,  full  of  years  and  dig- 
nity. The  kitchen  in  which  the  lead  was  melted  has 
been  torn  down,  but  the  rest  of  the  building  stands 
just  as  it  stood  in  the  long  ago ;  the  ancient  orchard 
is  still  an  orchard ;  and  the  present  owner,  a  Wolcott 
in  direct  descent,  pointed  out  to  me  the  spot  where 
the  bullets  were  made. 


43 


CHAPTER  IV 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  STREET 


ITTINGLY,  the  richest  church  in 
I  the  world  looks  down  the  richest 
street  in  the  world;  or  at  least, 
the  street  held  to  be  the  most  rep- 
resentative of  wealth. 


But  ^^Wall  Street''  is  more 
than  that  short  and  narrow  thor- 
oughfare; for  the  name  is  under- 
stood to  include,  also,  quite  a  sec- 
tion immediately  adjacent.   It  ex- 


tends, indeed,  down  Broadway  as  far  as  to  a  quiet- 
looking  building,  of  gray  stone  and  with  an 
ungraceful  square  tower,  known  throughout  the 
world  as  Number  26";  this  being  the  head- 
quarters of  the  Standard  Oil  Company.  What  ex- 
traordinary stories  are  represented  by  this  ordinary 
looking  building!  What  fiction,  and  what  facts 
stranger  than  fiction,  are  called  to  mind  by  the 
thought  of  the  centralized  power  that  the  building 
represents !  What  a  romance  it  all  has  been,  in  the 
rising  up,  from  nothing,  to  an  overshadowing  of  the 
world!  Wliat  business  splendidly  done,  what  griev- 
ous business  battles,  what  control  of  legislators,  of 


44 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  STREET 


mayors,  of  town  councilmen  and  of  individuals! 
How  sphinx-like  the  building  faces  Broadway,  hiding 
its  secrets  from  the  world ! 

The  first  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  of  the  United 
States  lived  for  a  time  in  a  house  which  stood  at 

Number  26'';  and  he  was  buried  in  the  graveyard  of 
Trinity  Church,  the  precursor  of  the  Trinity  of  to- 
day which,  of  sandstone  so  brown  as  almost  to  be 
black,  stands  looking  down,  from  its  position  on 
Broadway,  into  the  narrow  defile  of  Wall  Street.  In 
its  location,  and  with  its  great  open  stretch  of  old 
graveyard  on  either  hand,  the  church  is  of  wonder- 
ful impressiveness. 

The  first  Trinity,  built  in  the  reign  of  William  of 
Orange,  was  burned  in  the  great  fire  of  1776.  It  was 
rebuilt  in  1790,  and  when  this,  too,  was  burned,  the 
present  structure  was  erected.  It  was  completed  in 
1846  and  its  architect  was  Richard  Upjohn,  who  did 
invaluable  service  to  New  York  City  by  giving  to  it  a 
number  of  fine  and  dignified  churches,  at  a  time  when 
what  is  known  as  the  Victorian  influence  was  destroy- 
ing good  taste  upon  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic :  he  was 
a  worshiper  of  the  Gothic,  and  made  his  mid-century 
churches  look  delightfully  old!  The  notable  bronze 
doors  were  designed  by  St.  Gaudens,  and  were  surely 
inspired  by  the  doors  of  the  Baptistery  in  Florence. 

The  interior  of  the  church  is  dignified,  with  much 
of  impressiveness,  and  there  is  an  effect  of  fine  spa- 
ciousness, which  well  matches  the  spaciousness  of  the 
burying-ground  outside.  The  brilliant  white  of  the 
elaborate  altar  and  the  glow  of  myriad  colored  panes 

45 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


in  a  great  window  behind  it  make  a  contrast  that  will 
become  finer  and  finer  as  age  gently  softens  the  hues 
of  the  glass. 

It  used  to  be  that  the  spire  of  Trinity  was  the 
loftiest  landmark  of  New  York,  and  it  seemed  miracu- 
lous when  skyscrapers  began  to  mount  above  it. 
Henry  James,  less  than  forty  years  ago,  writing  his 

International  Episode, put  his  Englishman  up  to 
the  amazing  height  of  seven  stories  in  an  office  build- 
ing and  from  that  immense  height  the  roar  of  the 
street  sounded  infinitely  far  below,"  and  the  man 
was  startled  by  seeing  himself  on  a  level  with  a 
steeple  top !  Now,  Trinity  spire  is  far  below  the  cor- 
nices and  towers  of  the  giant  buildings  that  cluster 
thick  about  that  part  of  Broadway. 

Back  in  the  time  of  Queen  Anne,  Trinity  was  given 
a  royal  grant  of  a  great  tract  on  lower  Manhattan 
Island,  and  although  the  church  has  given  away  por- 
tions to  this  or  that  institution,  she  still  holds  the 
greater  part  of  the  tract,  and  is  the  greatest  tenement 
house  proprietor  in  New  York,  with  an  annual  income 
of  over  half  a  million  dollars,  from  which  she  assists 
in  the  upkeep  of  several  churchly  offshoots,  officially 
her  chapels,  and  such  good  works  as  seem  fitting,  and 
of  course  attends  to  her  own  ministry.  When  Doctor 
Berrian  was  rector  of  Trinity  a  preacher  from  a  poor 
country  parish  went  to  him  and  asked  for  his  influ- 
ence in  finding  a  church  with  a  larger  salary,  where- 
upon the  good  rector  exclaimed,  with  naive  earnest- 
ness, that  he  could  not  understand  why  clergymen  so 
often  wished  a  change:    **Why,"  he  concluded,  ^*I 

46 


OLD  TRINITY,    FAR   OVERTOPPED   BY   OFFICE  BUILDINGS 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  STREET 


have  been  with  Trinity  Church  for  forty  years,  and 
have  never  thought  of  leaving !  ^  ^ 

When  the  Prince  of  Wales,  afterwards  King  Ed- 
ward the  Seventh,  visited  New  York,  he  was  taken  to 
a  service  at  Trinity,  and  close  to  him  sat  General 
Winfield  Scott,  that  picturesque  figure  of  our  War  of 
1812  with  England,  and  in  the  crowded  aisle  beside 
the  pew  stood  George  Bancroft,  historian  of  the  Revo- 
lution ! — ^which  delicate  attentions  must  have  amused 
the  eminently  clear-sighted  young  man,  as  doubtless 
later  he  was  even  more  amused  when,  visiting  Wash- 
ington, nothing  would  do  but  that  he  must  go  down  to 
Mt.  Vernon  and  stand  before  the  tomb  of  the  man 
whose  leadership  had  taken  a  nation  from  England's 
rule. 

In  New  York,  besides  attending  Trinity,  the  Prince 
of  Wales  was  made  to  feel  that  he  was  indeed  a  guest 
that  the  city  delighted  to  honor,  for  he  was  taken  to 
Central  Park,  and  Cooper  Union,  and  Barnum's 
Museum,  and  the  Free  Academy,  and  a  Deaf  and 
Dumb  Institution!  In  fact,  he  was  treated  as  New 
Yorkers  always  used  to  treat  country  cousins,  but  in 
his  case  there  was  fortunately,  also,  a  splendid  ball 
in  his  honor  at  the  old  Academy  of  Music,  at  Irving 
Place  and  14th  Street ;  a  building  now  given  over  to 
moving  pictures,  after  a  long  career  as  opera  house 
and  theater,  and  at  the  time  of  the  great  ball  only  six 
years  old. 

Probably  the  most  beautiful  service  of  Trinity  is 
that  of  Ascension  Day,  when  it  is  customary  to  have 
a  special  choir  of  some  fifty  voices,  and  an  orchestra 

47 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


of  some  two-score  pieces,  so  as  to  give  superb  music 
superbly.  On  this  day  the  cburch  is  literally  packed, 
and  with  many  unable  to  enter,  and  the  splendid  serv- 
ice is  the  more  effective  from  the  knowledge  that, 
while  it  is  in  progress,  the  rush  and  turmoil  of  busi- 
ness, of  Broadway  and  Wall  Street,  are  at  the  very 
doors. 

The  noblest  memor\^  of  old  Trinity  ought  to  be  that, 
at  a  time  when  the  World  War  was  raging,  but  before 
America  had  plunged  in,  a  noon-day  meeting  was 
regularly  held  here,  to  pray  ^^for  the  restoration  of 
the  world's  peace,  and  for  divine  guidance  for  all 
men."  The  printed  form,  given  to  each  who  en- 
tered, expressed  the  hope  ^Hhat  a  way  may  be  found 
for  the  speedy  restoration  of  just  and  honorable  peace 
amongst  all  nations.'' 

No  other  graveyard  in  New  York  possesses  varied 
interest  to  equal  that  of  Trinity,  where  the  stones  and 
monuments  are  thick-clustered,  and  where  the  very 
place  seems  filled  with  thick-clustering  memories. 

Not  only  does  the  first  Secretary  of  the  Treasury, 
Alexander  Hamilton,  lie  here,  but  also  that  Gallatin 
of  the  three  ^^A's,"  Abraham  Albert  Alphonse,  the 
Swiss  who,  coming  to  America  in  1780,  and  at  once 
taking  part  in  our  war,  held  afterwards  a  succession 
of  high  offices,  including  that  of  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury.  Both  he  and  Hamilton  are  in  the  southern 
half  of  the  graveyard,  and  on  this  side,  too,  but  so 
far  back  as  to  be  at  the  extreme  verge,  is  the  grave 
of  that  picturesque  Eevolutionary  general,  highly 
trusted  by  Washington,  who  is  always  referred  to  as 

48 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  STREET 


Lord  Stirling,  although  his  efforts  in  the  British 
courts  to  secure  the  Stirling  earldom,  with  its  title 
and  estates,  were  unsuccessful:  the  self-made 
peer,''  Major  Andre  gibingly  termed  him.  Near  the 
tomb  of  Stirling  is  that  of  General  Kearney,  of  the 
Civil  War — for  our  old  churches,  like  the  cathedrals 
of  England,  began,  even  before  our  entry  into  the 
world  struggle,  to  put  up  memorials  to  veterans  and 
victims  of  war  after  war. 

Here  in  Trinity  churchyard  is  buried  that  Sir  Dan- 
vers  Osborne  who,  upon  landing  from  England, 
assumed  office,  and  after  ruling  as  governor  of  New 
York  for  half  a  week,  incontinently  hanged  himself. 
Here  is  the  supposed  grave  of  Charlotte  Temple, 
over  whose  sad  story,  whether  it  was  true  or  false, 
our  forefathers  and  mothers  loved  to  weep. 

Almost  at  the  entrance  of  the  church  is  the  tomb 
of  Captain  James  Lawrence,  he  of  the  Chesapeake 
and  Don't  give  up  the  ship!"  And  the  victorious 
English  honored  Lawrence  when,  with  display  and 
solemn  cannonading,  they  sailed  with  his  body, 
wrapped  in  the  American  flag,  into  Halifax.  And  it 
is  one  of  the  most  curious  similarities  of  literature 
that,  as  Oliver  "Wendell  Holmes  saved  Old  Ironsides 
from  destruction  with  his  vigorous  and  timely  verses, 
in  the  same  way  Tennyson,  with  vigorous  and  timely 
verse,  saved  from  destruction  the  Shannon,  the  con- 
queror of  the  Chesapeake, 

In  the  upper  corner  of  the  churchyard,  just  off  the 
Broadway  sidewalk,  is  a  towering  and  admirable 
monument  to  the  men  of  the  Revolution  who  died  in 

49 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


the  English  prisons  of  New  York.  There  is  no  word 
of  hate ;  there  is  no  reminder  of  the  needless  suffering 
which  was  inflicted  upon  those  men.  It  is  as  if,  under 
the  shadow  of  this  old  church,  all  enmity  should  be 
forgotten. 

And  yet,  being  human,  one  likes  to  remember  that, 
so  it  seems  (although,  unfortunately,  it  is  not  an  abso- 
lute certainty),  the  terrible  provost  Cunningham,  who 
was  responsible  for  most  of  the  cruelty,  and  who 
loved  to  boast  that  he  had  killed  more  Americans  than 
both  Burgoyne  and  Cornwallis  combined,  was  after- 
wards hanged,  in  London,  for  forgery.  He  had  a 
nephew  who  as  a  lad  assisted  him  and  was  especially 
active  in  extorting  money  for  food  and  for  any  miti- 
gation of  cruelty,  and  this  nephew  lived  on,  in  New 
York,  for  half  a  century  after  the  Eevolution,  in  busi- 
ness as  a  real  estate  agent. 

For  a  great  many  years,  burials  have  not  been  per- 
mitted in  this  old  Trinity  burying  ground,  except  in 
the  rare  case  of  some  member  of  an  old  family  that 
possesses  a  Trinity  family  tomb.  I  saw,  not  many 
years  ago,  such  a  funeral  and  burial  here,  it  being  the 
funeral  of  a  descendant  of  one  of  the  earliest  Dutch 
families,  and  it  made  a  very  impressive  scene,  here  in 
the  heart  of  the  busiest  portion  of  the  busiest  city  of 
the  world,  in  the  very  shadow  of  the  Elevated  trains 
that  went  thundering  by. 

It  is  one  of  the  prettiest  sights  in  this  great  city, 
to  see,  at  noontime,  on  pleasant  sunny  days,  pretty 
young  stenographers  sprinkled  about  this  ancient 
graveyard,  sewing  in  the  sun — not  precisely  Shake- 

50 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  STREET 


peare^s  charming  spinsters  and  knitters  in  the 
sun^';  but  Shakespeare  himself  would  doubtless  have 
changed  the  word  to  sewing  if  he  could  have  seen  this 
old  graveyard  of  Trinity  on  a  pleasant  day. 

Wall  Street  represents  the  financial  supremacy  of 
America,  the  financial  supremacy  of  the  world.  It  is 
no  exaggeration  to  say  that  Wall  Street  has  become 
the  money  capital  of  the  nations.  Here  it  is  that  the 
mighty  financial  affairs  of  Europe  and  Asia,  of  Africa 
and  Australia,  of  our  own  America,  are  directly  or 
indirectly  controlled.  The  vast  commercial  interests 
of  our  land,  the  trade  and  the  manufactures,  all  yield 
homage  to  this  clump  of  office  buildings  centering 
about  the  narrow  thoroughfare  into  whose  gorge-like 
chasm  Old  Trinity  so  staidly  looks. 

Wall  Street,  crowded  as  it  is  with  men  of  money, 
lined  as  it  is  by  office  buildings  occupied  by  financial 
firm3  whose  names  are  known  throughout  the  world, 
is  more  famous  for  an  old  building  at  the  corner  of 
Nassau  Street  than  for  the  offices  of  even  the  most 
famous  men  of  millions.  The  building  is  of  gray 
stone,  dulled  to  a  deeper  gray  by  time,  and  across  the 
entire  front  are  high  steps,  which  lead  up  to  a  terrace 
and  to  a  row  of  pillars  of  much  dignity,  and  thus  to 
the  entrance.  This  fine  old  building  stands  where 
stood  the  former  City  Hall,  which  was  used  as  a  meet- 
ing place  by  the  Continental  Congress  and  thus 
gained  the  name  of  Federal  Hall,  and  in  front  of 
which  Washington  took  the  oath  of  office  as  the  first 
President  of  the  United  States. 

The  great  slab  of  brown  stone  on  which  he  stood 

51 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


when  taking  the  oath  is  preserved  in  a  bronze  frame 
inside  the  present  building;  and  in  front  is  a  gravely 
noble  statue  of  Washington,  by  J.  Q.  A.  Ward.  That 
there  is  also  a  tablet  representing  Washington  kneel- 
ing under  a  two-branched  tree,  with  gloved  hands 
raised  in  prayer,  merely  shows  how  both  history  and 
religion  may  be  belittled. 

To  suggest  some  of  the  differences  between  those 
days  in  1789  and  today,  it  may  be  mentioned,  remind- 
fully,  that  there  was  no  telephone  then,  no  electricity, 
no  moving  pictures,  no  motor-cars,  no  telegraph; 
there  was  not  a  bathroom  or  a  furnace  or  a  gas  jet  or 
a  match  or  a  steel  pen  in  all  New  York. 

And  if  I  add  that  on  inauguration  day  Washington 
wore  a  coat  of  black  velvet,  a  white  waistcoat,  knee 
breeches,  silver  buckled  shoes,  yellow  gloves,  and  a 
long  dress-sword,  it  is  only  as  a  reminder  that  he  was 
a  careful  dresser  and  considered  that  a  man  of  posi- 
tion should  pay  great  attention  to  his  personal  looks. 

The  President ^s  March"  began  its  course  of  pop- 
ularity by  being  played  at  one  of  the  receptions  to 
Washington  on  his  way  here  from  Mount  Vernon  for 
the  inauguration:  after  that,  it  was  played  in  New 
York,  on  every  possible  Presidential  appearance,  and 
was  always  enthusiastically  received  by  the  public; 
and  no  wonder,  for  it  was  played  with  the  tune  to 
which  were  afterward  given  the  words  of  **Hail, 
Columbia ! ' ' 

Knowing  how  Wall  Street  is  abused,  by  many,  as  a 
place  of  metaphorical  financial  pirates,  it  is  curious 
to  know  that  it  was  the  shelter  of  a  very  real  pirate, 

52 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  STREET 


the  famous  Captain  Kidd  himself !  For  Kidd  did  not 
spend  all  his  life  on  the  sea  or  in  burying  treasure! 
He  lived  at  one  time  on  Pearl  Street,  here  in  New 
York,  and,  marrying  a  widow  who  lived  on  Wall 
Street,  he  became,  through  the  marriage,  the  owner 
of  the  house  at  what  was  number  56 ;  so  that  he  was 
a  veritable  Wall  Street  man. 

It  is  curious  about  Kidd  that,  pirate  though  he  was, 
and  indicted  for  piracy,  the  crime  for  which  he  was 
hanged  was  the  too  hasty  killing  of  one  of  his  own 
piratical  sailors  by  a  blow  with  a  bucket. 

It  is  odd  that  a  more  terrible  and  much  more  vicious 
pirate,  of  old-time  days,  was  named  Morgan;  but  in 
this  case  with  no  connection  whatever  with  Wall 
Street.  No  one  would  ever  have  thought  of  Morgan 
the  pirate  in  connection  with  any  Wall  Street  name, 
had  not  the  most  prominent  of  Wall  Street  men  of 
some  years  ago  been  moved  by  a  sense  of  saturnine 
humor  to  give  his  yacht  the  piratical  name  of  the 
Corsair  and  to  have  it  painted  black. 

In  the  early  days  of  New  York,  real  pirates,  or  free- 
booters who  were  looked  upon  as  probable  pirates, 
were  not  an  uncommon  sight  in  the  streets,  swashing 
about  in  their  great  hats,  their  flaming  waist-sashes, 
and  with  great  pistols  openly  showing.  Some  of  the 
early  New  York  fortunes  were  based  on  buying  loot 
from  the  pirates  and  selling  it  at  a  great  profit. 
Pirates  were  hanged,  at  New  York,  as  recently  as 
toward  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

Broad  Street,  which  is  really  an  unusually  broad 
street,  is  a  very  important  part  of  the  Wall  Street 

53 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


district:  during  banking  hours  its  pavement,  just 
around  the  corner  from  Wall  Street,  is  excitedly  alive 
with  the  brokers  of  the  picturesque  **curb  market,'* 
and  here  on  Broad  Street,  facing  this  curb  market,  is 
the  Stock  Exchange  itself. 

The  Stock  Exchange  is  a  beautiful  building,  in  some 
respects  a  superb  building.  It  has  an  admirable  row 
of  little  balconies,  low  set,  along  its  front,  above  the 
entrance  ways,  and  above  the  balconies  is  a  row  of 
low  windows,  and  above  them  is  a  mighty  frontage  of 
glass,  broad  and  high,  against  which  stand  six  great 
grooved  columns ;  above  these  columns  is  a  pediment, 
bearing  a  group  of  sculptured  figures,  emblematic  of 
commerce  and  finance. 

Inside  the  building,  the  great  floor  offers  an  excit- 
ing sight,  for  it  is  thronged  with  brokers  buying  and 
selling,  and  the  air  is  filled  with  frantic  cries.  It 
was  a  New  York  humorist  who  remarked,  with  truth, 
that  **a  seat  on  the  Stock  Exchange,"  costing  seventy- 
five  thousand  dollars  or  so,  meant  the  privilege  of 
standing  in  a  continuous  cane-rush  from  ten  to  three ! 

One  of  the  memories  of  Broad  Street  is  that  the 
great  Hamilton,  addressing  here  an  excited  crowd  on 
the  subject  of  the  Jay  Treaty  with  England,  was 
roughly  dragged  down  and  hustled  through  the 
street. 

Broad  Street  came  naturally  by  its  great  width,  for 
in  early  days  a  canal  led  down  its  middle,  and  quaint 
Dutch  houses  lined  each  side  of  the  placid  water,  which 
generations  ago  vanished.  The  houses  were  mostly 
of  wood,  except  for  their  gable  ends,  which  faced  the 

54 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  STREET 


canal  and  were  of  small  yellow  bricks  with  black 
headers:  the  doors  were  large,  the  windows  were 
small,  every  doorstep  was  immaculately  clean,  every- 
body clattered  about  in  wooden  shoes — it  is  like  a 
dream  to  think  of  that  picturesque  Broad  Street  of 
so  long  ago. 

There  still  stands,  at  the  corner  of  Broad  and  Pearl 
Street,  an  old  house  of  noble  memories :  not  so  old  as 
those  picturesque  houses  of  the  early  Dutch,  but  one 
of  the  oldest  existing  buildings  in  New  York;  it  is 
Fraunces  Tavern,  and  was  built  in  1719. 

The  building  has  suffered  from  fire  and  from  radi- 
cal alterations,  but  it  has  been  elaborately  restored 
by  the  Sons  of  the  Revolution  to  an  appearance  con- 
siderably like  that  of  its  early  years,  and  is  a  digni- 
fied, dormered  building  of  brick.  A  restaurant  is  still 
maintained  on  the  lower  floor.  On  the  second  floor 
is  the  famous  *^Long  Room,"  of  the  same  shape  and 
dimensions  that  it  was  when  it  won  its  fame,  and  not 
without  much  of  its  original  appearance,  in  spite  of 
the  somewhat  too  free  restoration.  Fittingly,  the 
building  has  been  made  the  depository  of  a  great  num- 
ber of  Revolutionary  relics;  for  its  association  with 
the  Revolution  was  profoundly  dramatic. 

For  it  was  here,  in  this  dignified  **Long  Room,'* 
that  Washington  took  farewell  of  his  most  prominent 
and  trusted  officers  at  the  close  of  the  Revolution. 
It  was  on  December  4, 1783,  and  among  the  forty-four 
officers  were  Knox  and  Wayne,  Greene  and  Steuben, 
Moultrie,  Lincoln  and  Hamilton.  It  was  a  solemn 
and  affecting  scene.    They  ate  together  in  almost 

55 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


breathless  silence.  Then  Washington  filled  his  glass 
with  wine,  and  said : 

*^  With  a  heart  full  of  love  and  gratitude  I  must  now 
take  my  leave  of  you.  I  most  devoutly  wish  that  your 
latter  days  may  be  as  prosperous  and  happy  as  your 
former  ones  have  been  glorious  and  honorable.'* 

All  drank  their  wine;  and  then,  one  by  one,  they 
made  their  farewells ;  a  scene  profoundly  solemn  and 
sorrowful. 


56 


CHAPTER  V 

ABOUND  CITY  HALL  PAEK 


ET  in  the  very  center  of  the  front 
wall  of  old  St.  PauPs,  on  Broadway, 
and  in  the  shadow  of  its  pillared 
portico,  is  a  tablet  setting  forth 
that  in  this  church  is  the  tomb  of 
the  gallant  General  Eichard  Mont- 
gomery. 

But  this  Broadway  front,  when 
the  church  was  built,  was  the  rear, 
and  the  real  face  of  the  church  still 
looks  out  in  the  direction  of  the 
North  Eiver,  between  which  and  the  church  there  was 
originally  nothing  but  trees  and  a  low  bank  and  the 
beach.  And,  in  strictness,  St.  PauPs  is  not  a  church, 
but  bears  only  the  name  of  Chapel,  being  an  off- 
shoot and  dependent  of  Trinity. 

With  the  exception  of  the  spire,  St.  PauPs  was  com- 
pleted in  1766,  and  its  stones  are  almost  black  with 
age  and  dust  and  smoke.  It  is  a  building  of  a  dig- 
nity in  which  a  certain  primness  is  mingled  with  a 
very  real  sense  of  charm.  The  spire,  rising  in  pleas- 
ing pilastered  gradations,  was  put  up  in  1794. 
Looking  at  the  Montgomery  tablet,  there  comes  the 

57 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


picture  of  a  gallant  young  British  officer,  who,  having 
recently  resigned  his  commission,  after  winning 
honors  under  the  command  of  Wolfe,  had  become  a 
citizen  of  the  Colony  of  New  York  and  had  fallen  in 
love  with  the  pretty  daughter  of  one  of  the  powerful 
Livingstons.  have  ventured  to  request,  sir,'*  he 
writes,  with  old-fashioned  formality  to  the  young 
woman's  father.  Judge  Robert  E.  Livingston,  *Hhat 
you  will  consent  to  a  union  which  to  me  has  the  most 
promising  appearance  of  happiness,  from  the  lady's 
uncommon  merit  and  amiable  worth."  He  does  not, 
you  see,  promise  happiness  to  the  young  woman,  or 
speak  of  his  own  advantages,  but  the  very  naivete  of 
the  letter  shows  him  as  a  likable  young  man,  and  both 
father  and  daughter  were  alike  in  so  believing.  And 
so  they  were  married;  and  in  two  years  the  Revolu- 
tion broke  out,  and  at  once  Montgomery  was  ordered, 
with  General  Benedict  Arnold,  to  attempt  the  capture 
of  Quebec.  And,  as  the  story  of  it  all  comes  back,  one 
forgets  this  quiet  portico  and  the  ceaseless  rush  of 
Broadway,  and  thinks  of  the  heroic  attack,  the  narrow 
path  along  the  cliff,  the  fierce  wind  and  the  drifting 
snow  and  the  slippery  ice,  and  of  the  whirl  of  grape- 
shot  which  marked  Montgomery's  death. 

The  English  conquerors  carried  his  body  with 
honor  into  Quebec,  for  chivalry  had  not  then  passed 
from  war,  and  there  it  lay  until  1818,  when  the  State 
of  New  York  asked  that  it  might  be  yielded  to  the  land 
of  his  adoption. 

With  sorrowful  pomp  the  body  was  brought  back, 
and  the  last  stage  of  the  journey  was  by  boat  down 

58 


AROUND  CITY  HALL  PARK 


the  Hudson.  At  Rhinebeck,  which  for  their  brief 
married  life  had  been  their  home,  Montgomery's 
widow  was  still  living,  and  as  the  funeral  barge  ap- 
proached she  begged  to  be  left  alone,  to  see  it  from 
the  window  of  the  room  which  had  been  most  dear  to 
them,  forty-three  years  before;  and  cannon  thun- 
dered from  the  boat,  and  the  guard  stood  at  salute 
beside  the  catafalque;  and  when  the  boat  moved 
slowly  on  into  the  distance,  and  friends  went  gently 
in  to  the  hero's  lonely  widow,  they  found  her  fallen 
unconscious,  overpowered  by  the  rush  of  memories. 

St.  PauPs,  in  its  burials,  seems  to  have  been  de- 
sirous to  point  out,  even  in  early  days,  the  cosmopoli- 
tan character  of  the  city,  for  here  lie  such  men  as 
the  Hessian  Baron  Nordeck,  and  that  Sieur  de  Roche 
Fontaine  who  was  aide  to  Rochambeau. 

Within,  the  church  is  pleasantly  impressive;  and, 
indeed,  the  interior  was  definitely  modeled  after  fa- 
mous old  St.  Martin 's-in-the-Fields,  of  London.  And 
there  is  still  preserved,  and  held  in  reverence,  but  not 
with  such  reverence  but  that  the  visitor  to  the  building 
may  sit  in  it  if  he  so  desires,  the  pew  which  General 
Washington  occupied  when  he  lived  in  New  York; 
Trinity,  the  parent  church,  being  then  but  a  ruin,  hav- 
ing been  burned  during  British  occupancy  of  the  city. 

St.  PauPs  occupies  the  block  between  Fulton  and 
Vesey  Streets,  and  at  Vesey,  while  Broadway  con- 
tinues straight  on.  Park  Row  leads  off  diagonally  to 
the  right;  to  the  point  thus  formed,  City  Hall  Park 
used  to  extend,  and  there  was  an  admirable  gateway 
here,  and  an  admirable  view  of  the  present  City  Hall 

59 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


itself :  but  this  fetching  view  was  lost  when  a  post- 
office  structure  of  unusual  unattractiveness  was  built 
here,  in  1875. 

Opposite  the  upper  end  of  the  post-office  stands  the 
loftiest  of  all  skyscrapers,  the  Woolworth  building, 
which  splendidly  rises  in  its  fifty-one  stories,  to  the 
seemingly  impossible  height  of  750  feet.  It  is  a  noble 
building,  in  its  dignity  and  in  its  fine  simplicity,  and 
points  out,  if  the  fact  needs  any  pointing  out,  that  a 
skyscraper  may  be  not  only  a  thing  of  necessity,  in  a 
city  developing  as  New  York  develops,  but  a  thing  of 
beauty  as  well. 

With  a  fine  air  of  distinction,  the  City  Hall  looks 
out  over  its  little  park.  It  is  a  building  of  cream 
color,  mellowed  and  darkened  by  time,  a  building  of 
perfection  of  outline,  of  peculiar  attractiveness.  It 
is  so  different  from  what  one  expects  to  see  in  New 
York  that  it  is  no  wonder  that  the  newly  arrived 
Irishman  remarked,  on  first  catching  sight  of  it,  that 
it  was  certainly  not  made  in  this  country ! 

It  is  but  two  stories  high,  unless  one  counts  the  half 
story  of  a  basement  and  the  slight  square  attic  up- 
lifted in  the  center,  and  it  is  surmounted  by  a  smallish 
and  admirable  clock-tower;  but  although  it  stands  in 
the  midst  of  towering  new  buildings,  among  which  are 
not  only  the  Woolworth  but  the  immense  and  lofty 
new  Municipal  Building,  this  little  old  City  Hall,  so 
graceful,  so  self-possessed,  with  so  fine  an  air  of  re- 
pose, of  distinction,  does  not  seem  small.  Indeed,  it 
seems  to  dominate!  It  is  a  little  Napoleon  among 
giant  marshals. 

60 


ABOUND  CITY  HALL  PAEK 


The  center  of  the  building  is  recessed,  with  two  pro- 
jecting wings.  Throughout,  it  is  the  knowledge  and 
use  of  proper  proportions  that  give  the  building  its 
fineness  of  look.  There  is  more  than  the  usual  num- 
ber of  windows  along  the  front,  thus  adding  to  the 
aspect  of  airy  lightness.  In  front  of  the  broad  stone 
steps  that  lead  up  to  the  low-pillared  entrance,  the 
sidewalk  bends  broadly  outward  in  a  generous  bow, 
and,  slightly  terraced,  adds  to  the  general  effective- 
ness. 

Inside,  the  admirable  stone  stairway,  a  double  stair, 
sweeping  upward  within  the  rotunda,  is  a  marvelous 
achievement  of  grace  and  beauty.  The  encircling  pil- 
lars at  the  head  of  the  stairs  are  of  much  dignity. 
The  Governor's  Eoom — so  called  from  the  intention 
that  this  should  always  be  a  headquarters  ready  for 
the  Governor  of  the  State,  whenever  he  should  visit 
the  metropolis — is  really  a  suite  of  three  connecting 
rooms  which  keep  up  the  old-time  atmosphere  of  fine 
stateliness.  Maintained  as  a  memento  of  the  past, 
the  Governor's  Room  is  beautiful  in  its  paneling  and 
cornices  and  ceilings,  its  fireplaces,  the  portraits  of 
distinguished  men  that  line  its  walls,  and  its  fine  old 
furniture.  The  room  has  a  soft  beauty  of  coloring, 
from  the  white  of  the  woodwork,  the  varied  colors  of 
the  paintings,  the  mahogany  furniture,  the  oak  floor ; 
and  of  all  of  the  coloring,  the  buff  and  blue  of  Trum- 
bull's Washington  is  most  delightful. 

This  portrait  of  Washington  was  painted  in  1790, 
at  the  special  request  of  the  city  authorities,  who  for- 
mally asked  Washington  to    permit  Mr.  Trumbull  to 

61 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


take  his  portrait  to  be  placed  in  the  City  Hall  as  a 
monument  to  the  respect  which  the  inhabitants  of  this 
city  have  toward  him'';  the  City  Hall  of  that  time 
being  the  building  on  Wall  Street. 

This  began  a  very  pleasant  custom  on  the  part  of 
the  city  to  obtain  for  its  City  Hall  the  portraits  of 
leading  men,  and  especially  men  of  this  State,  and  the 
custom  was  kept  up  for  some  seventy-five  years. 
(Ancient  Florence  began  a  similar  custom,  and  in- 
stead of  wearying  with  seventy-five  years  kept  it  up 
for  centuries!) 

Washington  is  represented  as  standing  beside  his 
gray  horse,  with  one  hand  on  the  pommel  of  the  saddle. 
It  is  a  quiet  but  spirited  portrait,  and  Washington 
looks  every  inch  a  leader,  in  his  coat  of  blue,  his 
breeches  and  waistcoat  of  buff,  his  high  black  boots. 
The  background  represents  the  view  and  the  walk 
which  he  personally  loved,  for  it  is  New  York  Bay  and 
the  hills  of  Staten  Island,  as  seen  from  the  walk  along 
the  Battery. 

Among  the  other  portraits  is  that  of  Seward  as 
governor,  twenty  years  before  the  Civil  War,  a  slen- 
der, youngish,  dapper,  tight-buttoned  man,  painted  by 
Inman ;  and  also  an  Inman  is  that  of  the  distinguished 
New  Yorker,  Van  Buren,  with  red  hair  and  red  side- 
whiskers  and  his  hand  on  a  tablecloth  of  dull  crimson ; 
not  at  all  the  Van  Buren  of  the  imagination !  For  this 
is  a  retiring  sort  of  man,  lacking  altogether  in  the  ex- 
pected aggressiveness  of  the  chosen  protege  of  the 
fiery  Jackson. 

Here  is  Alexander  Hamilton,  painted  by  Trumbull ; 

62 


AROUND  CITY  HALL  PARK 


a  good-looking  man,  a  little  thin-lipped,  with  pow- 
dered hair  and  white  stock.  It  takes  away  from  the 
value  of  this  portrait  that  it  was  not  painted  from 
life,  but  one  year  after  Hamilton's  death;  but  it  no 
doubt  correctly  represents  his  long  nose,  his  thin  lips, 
his  fingers  a  little  too  slender.  Here  is  DeWitt  Clin- 
ton who,  the  son  of  a  distinguished  father,  won  dis- 
tinction even  greater  than  that  of  his  father.  He  is  a 
stoutish  man  with  an  alert  and  distinctly  modern  face. 
The  portrait  was  painted  by  that  Catlin  who  was  one 
of  the  earliest  travelers  among  the  Indians  of  the 
West  and  a  painter  of  Indian  scenes. 

Among  the  others  is  a  Hudson  that  need  not  seri- 
ously be  considered,  and  also  a  Stuyvesant  about 
which  very  little  is  known;  but  there  is  a  really  ex- 
cellent bust  of  Henry  Clay,  made  by  Pruden,  in  1849. 
And  there  is  a  portrait  of  Oliver  Hazard  Perry — com- 
monly referred  to  as  Commodore, ' '  but  to  whom  a 
grateful  government  never  gave  a  higher  title  than 
Captain,  and  even  that  not  until  after  the  Battle  of 
Lake  Erie.  This  painting  was  made  at  the  request 
of  the  city,  in  1816,  very  shortly  after  his  victory ;  it 
is  by  Jarvis,  and  it  shows  the  gallant  young  Perry  in 
an  open  boat,  bareheaded,  in  blue  coat  and  white 
waistcoat  and  trousers,  with  sailors  beside  him  in 
striped  woolen  sweaters  and  beaver  hats  of  the  shape 
of  the  silk  hats  of  today ;  this  scene  representing  him 
in  the  act  of  changing  from  his  sinking  flagship  to 
another  ship,  to  continue  the  fight. 

It  is  one  of  the  pleasant  things  about  New  York 
that  it  has  always  loved  to  do  honor  to  naval  heroes. 

63 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


Eecently  it  was  Dewey;  long  ago  Hull  and  Decatur 
were  honored  here,  and  were  formally  received  at  the 
City  Hall ;  and  Oliver  Hazard  Perry  was  also  one  of 
the  naval  men  to  whom  New  York  gave  a  special  pub- 
lic welcome,  in  addition  to  securing  his  portrait. 

The  old-time  furniture  here  is  fascinating.  There 
is  a  beautiful  great  desk,  a  Sheraton  of  unusual 
length  and  design,  flat-topped,  with  drawers  at  either 
end  as  well  as  at  each  side,  the  desk  which  Washing- 
ton, as  President,  personally  used  here  in  New  York 
City.  There  are  also  desks  that  were  personally 
used  by  John  Adams  and  Alexander  Hamilton;  and 
there  are  chairs  and  tables  and  settees,  made  for  the 
first  furnishing  of  the  former  Federal  Hall. 

J olm  McComb,  a  Scotchman,  was  the  reputed  archi- 
tect of  the  City  Hall,  but  there  is  some  reason  for 
thinking  that  the  perfection  of  the  design  was  largely 
owing  to  an  assistant;  a  Frenchman.  It  should  be 
remembered,  however,  that  the  best  architectural 
work  of  the  then  recent  years  had  been  by  Scotchmen, 
the  family  of  Adam,  that  they  had  published  their 
designs,  and  that  this  building  shows  marked  Adam 
characteristics. 

McComb  himself  furnished  the  stone  and  did  the 
stone  work,  and  under  him,  for  the  woodwork,  was  a 
man  named  Weeks,  who  had  a  brother  who  was 
charged  with  having  murdered  a  girl  to  whom  he  was 
engaged.  Hamilton  and  Burr,  who  at  that  time  had 
not  become  enemies,  were  united  in  the  defense  of 
Weeks,  and  the  Judge,  Lansing,  practically  ordered 
the  jury  to  acquit. 

64 


ABOUND  CITY  HALL  PAEK 


The  girPs  aunt,  shaking  with  passionate  grief,  cried 
openly  in  the  court  room  that  there  would  be  no  jus- 
tice in  Heaven  if  those  who  had  set  free  the  slayer  of 
her  niece  should  die  unpunished.  And  old  New  York- 
ers used  to  point  out,  with  awe,  that  Hamilton  was 
shot ;  that  Burr,  a  disgraced  wanderer,  crept  disgraced 
to  death;  that  Lansing,  rising  to  be  chief  justice, 
stepped  out  of  his  office  in  New  York,  one  day  in  1829, 
and  quite  vanished  out  of  existence,  in  absolute  and 
mysterious  disappearance. 

In  front  of  the  City  Hall  stands  one  of  the  most  dis- 
tinguished works  of  art  in  New  York,  a  bronze  statue, 
by  MacMonnies,  of  Nathan  Hale,  the  schoolmaster  cap- 
tain who  volunteered  to  act  as  a  spy  to  obtain  informa- 
tion of  which  Washington  was  vitally  in  need.  The 
statue,  with  a  brave  pathos  in  its  pose,  bears  upon 
the  base  Hale's  noble  last  words  that  his  only  regret 
was  that  he  had  but  one  life  to  give  for  his  country. 

By  an  incomprehensible  blunder,  the  statement  is 
also  inscribed  on  the  base  that  Hale  was  *^a  captain 
in  the  regular  army  of  the  United  States,"  although 
the  United  States  did  not  even  exist  until  years  after 
his  death.  He  was  hurriedly  hanged,  after  the  fare- 
well messages  which  he  had  written  to  his  mother  and 
to  the  girl  he  was  to  have  married  were  burned  before 
his  eyes.  The  face,  of  gentle  manliness,  is  but  an 
ideal,  as  there  was  no  portrait  to  follow:  nor  was 
Hale  executed  where  his  statue  stands,  but  at  some 
spot,  vaguely  identified  as  being  on  the  Beekman 
property,  beside  the  East  Eiver. 

Within  scarcely  more  than  a  stone's  throw,  how- 

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THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


ever,  from  this  statue  there  was  long  ago  a  hanging 
in  New  York  City  which,  like  that  of  Hale,  was  en- 
tirely without  dishonor  to  the  man  upon  whom  sen- 
tence was  inflicted. 

Following  the  overturning  of  the  English  govern- 
ment by  William  and  Mary,  a  committee  of  safety 
met,  in  New  York,  to  appoint  a  governor  to  take  the 
place  of  the  governor  who  had  been  appointed  under 
the  Stuart  regime,  whereupon  a  merchant  named 
Jacob  Leisler  was  chosen,  and  he  acted  as  governor 
from  1689  to  1691,  holding  the  office  with  dignity,  and 
ready  at  any  time  to  turn  over  his  powers  to  a  duly 
accredited  successor. 

It  was  Leisler  who,  as  acting  governor,  summoned 
the  first  Congress  of  the  Colonies  to  meet !  He  called 
the  meeting  together  at  the  old  State  House  in  Coen- 
ties  Slip,  in  1690,  and  representatives  were  there  from 
New  York,  Massachusetts,  Connecticut,  Plymouth, 
which  was  then  under  a  separate  government,  and 
Maryland.  New  Jersey  sent  its  *  ^  sympathies ' '  in- 
stead of  representatives;  and  the  Quakers  of  Penn- 
sylvania sent  word  that  it  was  *^ag't  their  princ's  to 
fight."  This  Congress  voted  to  raise  an  army  of 
eight  hundred  and  fifty  men  to  invade  Canada  and 
wipe  out  the  French,  but  it  is  not  recorded  that  the 
French  were  wiped  out  at  that  time. 

Leisler  *s  career  was  tragically  ended.  A  man 
with  the  suggestive  name  of  Sloughter  came  over, 
appointed  as  governor,  and  although  Leisler  made  no 
opposition  whatever  when  the  proper  credentials 
were  shown  him,  he  was  put  under  arrest,  treated 

66 


AEOUND  CITY  HALL  PARK 


with  the  greatest  harshness,  and  sentenced  to  death, 
in  spite  of  his  pitiful  amazement  that  he  was  to  be 
slain  by  William  for  holding  the  Colony  against 
Stuart  sympathizers!  He  and  his  son-in-law  were 
hanged,  under  accompanying  circumstances  of  great 
cruelty,  in  a  drenching  rain,  in  the  Leisler  garden, 
close  to  the  edge  of  what  is  now  City  Hall  Park. 

The  stigma  of  disloyalty  was  afterwards  formally 
removed,  and  Frankfort  and  Jacob  Streets  bear  in 
mind  the  unfortunate  man,  for  Jacob  was  his  first 
name  and  Frankfort  was  the  city  of  his  birth.  There 
is  a  street  up  near  Mulberry  Bend  with  the  sweet  old- 
fashioned  name  of  Hester,  but  that  district  is  now 
so  far  from  being  either  sweet  or  old-fashioned  that 
one  does  not  think  of  even  the  name  as  a  delightful 
one:  but  it  was  named  for  Hester,  the  daughter  of 
Governor  Leisler. 

The  City  Hall  was  completed  in  1812 ;  and,  in  the 
open  space  where  it  now  stands,  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  was  read  to  the  gathered  American 
troops,  on  July  9,  1776,  in  the  presence  of  General 
"Washington. 

Washington's  first  New  York  home,  after  he  be- 
came President,  was  but  a  few  minutes'  walk  from  this 
spot,  on  Cherry  Hill,  at  the  corner  of  Cherry  Street 
and  the  incredibly  curving  Pearl  Street,  on  what  is 
now  known  as  Franklin  Square. 

Cherry  Hill,  in  early  days,  was  a  charming  region, 
with  cherry  trees  and  greenery  leading  down  to  the 
sparkling  river.  But  the  Cherry  Hill  of  to-day  is 
one  of  the  disreputable-looking  tenement  districts  of 

67 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


the  city,  with  houses  of  different  heights  standing  at 
irregular  angles  with  the  sidewalks,  and  threatening 
dark  passageways  leading  to  dingier  and  darker  tene- 
ments in  the  rear.  From  the  huge  bridge,  the  orig- 
inal Brooklyn  Bridge,  far  overhead,  comes  the  dis- 
tant rumble  of  traffic.  At  the  upper  end  of  the  slope 
stands  a  huge  abutment,  darkly  massive,  and  on  that 
very  spot  stood  the  Presidential  mansion. 

The  progress  of  New  York  since  early  days  is 
splendidly  marked  by  its  bridges.  To  say  that  they 
are  the  greatest  bridges  in  the  world  is  but  a  small 
statement,  for  nowhere  else  in  the  world  are  there 
bridges  even  to  be  compared  with  them. 

The  original  Brooklyn  Bridge,  over  a  mile  in 
length,  is  still  fondly  known  by  that  distinctive  name, 
and  its  beautifully  sweeping  curve  still  gives  it  the 
supremacy  in  looks.  Close  above  is  the  Manhattan 
Bridge ;  then  comes  the  Williamsburg  Bridge,  with  its 
length  of  over  a  thousand  feet  more  than  the  first  of 
these  bridges,  and  of  7,200  feet  in  all.  Next  up  the 
East  Eiver  is  the  huge  Queensboro,  fourteen  hundred 
feet  longer  than  the  Williamsburg,  and  with  a 
mighty  length  of  8601  feet  in  all.  And  last  of  all  is 
the  tremendous  Hell  Gate  Bridge,  leading  from  East 
141st  Street  to  Astoria. 

Different  from  the  other  bridges  is  this  Hell  Gate 
Bridge.  For  the  others  are  for  trolley  cars  and  foot 
passengers,  for  wagons  and  automobiles,  but  the  Hell 
Gate  is  a  railroad  bridge,  making,  with  its  huge  bulk, 
the  connecting  link  which  for  the  first  time  permits, 
in  connection  with  the  tunnels,  through  trains  to  run 

6S 


AROUND  CITY  HALL  PAEK 


without  ferriage  from  the  South,  through  New  York 
City,  on  to  New  England. 

Stupendous,  marvelous — ^no  words  can  be  too 
strong  for  these  achievements :  and  by  far  the  great- 
est praise  and  the  greatest  credit  belong  to  the  mem- 
ory of  the  engineer,  Roebling,  who  first  saw  how  to 
span  this  great  width  of  water,  and  who  made  the 
plans  for  Brooklyn  Bridge  and  got  the  work  in  suc- 
cessful motion — and  then  died  before  the  bridge  could 
be  completed.  Work  was  begun  in  1870:  the  bridge 
was  opened  for  traffic  in  1883:  and  I  like  to  believe 
the  story,  which  bears  the  marks  of  poetical  truth, 
that  Roebling,  dying,  and  unable  to  leave  his  room, 
had  himself,  day  by  day,  placed  at  the  window,  whence 
he  could  see,  in  the  distance,  the  lofty  towers,  and  the 
great  bridge  curving  toward  completion. 


CHAPTER  VI 

MILLION-FOOTED  MANHATTAN  " 


"ALT  WHITMAN  never 
wearied  of  coining  phras- 
es to  express  his  admira- 
tion of  New  York,  such 
as:  Superb-faced  Man- 
hattan''; **City  of  the 
World!  City  of  tall  fa- 
Qades  of  marble  and 
iron ! ' '  *  *  Mettlesome, 
mad,  extravagant  city ! ' ' 


^^Wlien  million-footed  Manhattan  unpent  descends  to 
her  pavement ' ' ;  and,  naturally,  *  *  My  city ! ' ' 

The  thrill,  the  life,  the  movement,  the  strength,  of 
the  city — how  they  stand  for  the  most  representative 
Americanism!  And  foreign  visitors  are  much  im- 
pressed by  these  aspects  of  Americanism :  as,  for  ex- 
ample, Thackeray,  who  writes:  Broadway  has  a 
rush  of  life  such  as  I  have  never  seen:  the  rush  and 
restlessness  please  me. ' '  Eudyard  Kipling,  however, 
was  frankly  jarred  by  this  kind  of  Americanism,  at 
least  on  his  first  visit.  Busy  streets,  and  huge  busi- 
ness structures,  frankly  wearied  him,  and,  as  he  has 
never  been  in  the  habit  of  mincing  his  words,  he  pub- 


70 


^'MILLION-FOOTED  MANHATTAN'' 


lished  his  irritable  belief  that  Americans  were  bar- 
barians ' '  and  *  *  heathens. ' '  However,  the  barbarians 
and  heathens  forgave  him,  and  all  America  watched 
and  waited  with  eager  sympathy  when  he  lay  in  New 
York,  at  the  threshold  of  death,  in  the  late  '90  *s.  Kip- 
ling came  to  know  New  York  very  well:  and  I  have 
wondered  whether,  with  his  love  for  the  picaresque 
and  unusual,  he  ever  knew,  in  regard  to  a  hotel  that 
was  one  of  his  favorites,  that  the  brother  of  the  pro- 
prietor was  said  to  be  a  professional  thief  and  swin- 
dler whose  frequent  address  was  the  penitentiary,  and 
that  the  hotel  itself,  highly  respectable  and  prosper- 
ous, had  been  built,  so  it  was  said,  with  the  ill-earned 
money  from  the  brother  who,  for  cogent  reasons,  was 
unable,  himself,  to  spend  much  time  there ! 

A  human  tide  comes  flowing  into  the  business  por- 
tion of  New  York  every  morning;  it  fills  the  canyon 
gorge  of  Broadway,  it  goes  rushing  in  currents  into 
the  side  streets  and  offshoots,  it  is  sucked  into  the 
great  stores  and  the  office  buildings.  Then,  in  the  aft- 
ernoon, the  tide  turns.  The  human  stream  comes 
pouring  out  of  the  buildings,  rushing  from  street  after 
street,  swirling  into  the  subways,  moving  in  swift  cur- 
rents toward  ferries  and  elevated  trains,  rushing  to- 
ward the  great  bridges.  And  no  feature  of  this  gen- 
eral scene  is  more  impressive  than  the  black-coated, 
black-skirted  streams  moving  in  unbroken  currents, 
across  the  squares  and  across  the  avenues,  eastward 
into  the  tenement  districts. 

In  general  character,  the  lower  part  of  the  city  on 
the  West  Side  is  different  from  that  on  the  East ;  the 

71 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


streets  are  broader,  the  houses  are  lower,  there  are 
far  more  individual  homes  remaining,  with  concomi- 
tantly fewer  tenements,  there  is  many  a  charming  old 
doorway,  many  an  oval  window,  there  are  wrought- 
iron  newels  with  pineapples  or  classic  urns ;  and  here 
the  population  is  still  largely  American  or  Irish- 
American. 

Far  down  on  the  lower  West  Side,  on  Varick  Street, 
at  St.  John's  Park,  is  St.  John's  Chapel,  which  was 
considered  so  far  uptown  when  it  was  built  that  it  was 
wondered  who  could  possibly  be  expected  to  attend  it, 
but  which  is  now  so  far  downtown  that  church-goers 
never  get  to  it.  Trinity  Church,  owning  a  great  deal 
of  land  in  this  vicinity,  and  wishing  in  consequence  to 
draw  wealthy  homes  here,  built  for  this  reason,  St. 
John 's,  completed  in  1807. 

At  the  time  it  was  built,  it  faced  out  over  a  space 
free  of  houses  towards  the  Hudson,  and  was  known  as 
St.  John's-in-the-Field.  Within  the  park  which  was 
laid  out  within  a  few  years  after  the  building  of  the 
church  grew  fine  big  trees,  and  this  park  space  was 
enclosed,  as  Gramercy  Park  still  is,  within  an  iron 
fence  with  a  locked  gate,  whose  keys  were  given  to 
owners  of  the  new  houses  facing  the  park,  as  they  were 
built.  They  were  fine  houses  that  gradually  arose 
there,  but  most  of  them  were  torn  down  and  replaced 
by  business  structures  many  and  many  a  year  ago. 
But,  before  the  coming  of  business,  the  entire  centre 
of  the  park,  which  was  to  have  remained  a  delightful 
open  space  forever,  was  acquired  by  the  New  York 
Central  Eailway,  which  covered  every  portion  of  the 

72 


^^MILLION-FOOTED  MANHATTAN'' 


park  area,  over  half  a  century  ago,  with  a  huge  un- 
sightly freight  station,  thus  not  only  ruining  the 
neighborhood  for  homes,  but  blotting  the  park  itself 
entirely  out  of  existence:  for  always  there  are  men 
who  can  carry  out  ruthless  plans.  I  remember  meet- 
ing an  old  gentleman,  an  old-time  resident  of  the  park, 
who  told  what  a  poignant  tragedy  to  him  and  to  others 
was  the  felling  of  the  trees. 

Old  St.  John's,  now  black  with  age,  is  of  stately 
porticoed  design,  with  great  pillars,  and  its  fine  tower 
diminishingly  rises  in  pilastered  squares  and  columned 
circles.  Its  interior  is  stately  and  dignified,  with  fine 
colunms,  and  tall  square  pilastered  corners  at  the 
front  of  the  chancel,  and  a  curving  stairway  to  the 
pulpit. 

I  say  that  all  this  *4s,"  but  even  as  I  write  the 
stately  old  building  may  be  destroyed.  In  front  of  it 
a  new  subway  has  undermined  the  very  portico,  and 
on  either  side  are  wreckage  and  desolation.  Even 
before  the  recent  additional  changes  of  the  vicinity 
began  to  be  made.  Trinity  was  on  the  point  of  giving 
up  this  chapel,  and  by  the  time  this  is  published  the 
building  may,  not  improbably,  be  demolished.  It  won 
so  many  friends  by  its  dignified  beauty,  that  it  has 
been  permitted  to  remain  long  after  its  practical  use- 
fulness disappeared. 

The  last  time  that  I  was  there,  one  day  as  the  after- 
noon shadows  were  gently  stretching  across  the  shad- 
owy interior,  it  was  not  a  time  for  service,  but  the 
organist  was  softly  practising,  and  I  was  the  only  one 
in  the  church.    Sweet  and  pleasant  was  the  effect,  de- 

73 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


lightful  was  the  fine  dignity  of  it  all  and  the  softly 
echoing  music — and  then,  at  the  very  door,  came  a 
succession  of  crashing  detonations  from  the  blasting 
work. 

It  is  a  pleasant  thing  to  remember  in  connection 
with  this  old  church  that  here  there  is  still  given  out, 
on  Saturday  mornings,  a  free  weekly  dole  of  sixty- 
seven  loaves  of  wheaten  bread  in  compliance  with  the 
will  of  a  certain  John  Leake,  who  died  in  1792,  leav- 
ing money  whose  income  should  always  be  thus  de- 
voted to  feeding  the  poor.  Delightfully  remindful, 
this,  that  New  York  is  really  an  old  city ;  for  nothing 
is  pleasanter  than  ancient  pleasant  customs,  graceful 
charities  which  are  to  go  on  forever,  like  the  dole  of 
bread  and  ale  that  has  been  given  out  for  centuries 
at  charming  old  Winchester,  in  England.  And,  as  to 
the  continued  permanence  of  the  dole  of  old  St.  John's, 
a  man  in  charge  of  the  building  said  to  me,  with  fretful 
resignation,  as  of  submission,  but  with  frank  unwil- 
lingness, to  the  inevitable :  We  can't  stop  givin'  it : 
it's  lor:  the  lor  won't  let  us"! 

St.  John's  Park  has  a  curious  connection  with  the 
tragedy  of  the  Blennerhassetts,  who  lived  so  romanti- 
cally on  the  Ohio,  and  who  were  ruined  through  their 
connection  with  Aaron  Burr:  for  their  son,  helpless 
and  an  object  of  charity,  lingered  on  till  1854,  and 
shortly  before  his  death  was  visited  by  J ames  Parton, 
the  historian,  bearing  a  contribution  from  a  number 
of  sympathizers,  and  Parton  tells  of  finding  him  in  a 
miserable  room  near  St.  John 's  Park,  an  elderly  man, 
shabbily  dressed,  with  a  pallid,  expressionless  face. 

74 


MILLION-FOOTED  MANHATTAN 


The  graveyard  of  St.  John's  was  at  some  blocks  to 
the  northward,  on  Hudson  Street,  and  it  was  a  roman- 
tic looking  place,  which  a  few  years  ago  was  turned 
into  a  children's  playground  and  a  sunken  Italian 
garden  and  named  Hudson  Park.  One  of  the  old  mon- 
uments is  still  preserved  there ;  a  firemen's  monument 
ornamented  with  stone  helmets  and  firemen's  trump- 
ets. A  row  of  old-time  houses,  admirably  preserved, 
looks  into  the  park ;  *  *  St.  Luke 's  Place, ' '  this  used  to 
be  called,  and  long  ago  these  were  homes  of  prosper- 
ous sea-captains. 

St.  John's  Graveyard  well  deserves  to  be  remem- 
bered, for,  so  the  tradition  has  come  down,  it  was 
through  walking  back  and  forth  among  its  stones  that 
the  idea  of  the  *  ^  Kaven ' '  came  to  Edgar  Allan  Poe. 

A  few  minutes'  walk  from  here,  just  away  from  the 
lower  end  of  Sixth  Avenue,  is  a  little  section  centered 
in  Minetta  Street  and  Minetta  Lane,  which  is  the 
wretchedest  part  of  the  city  in  outward  appearance : 
it  is  a  center  for  poor-looking  negroes,  and  some 
poorer  whites,  and  the  tiny  area  is  a  nest  of  narrowest 
streets,  scarcely  more  than  alleys,  with  unexpected 
crooks  and  twists.  The  houses  are  tumbledown  and 
old,  and  originally  were  picturesque,  with  dormered 
roofs,  with  hips  and  gables,  with  their  front  steps  of 
stone  leading  up  sidewise  to  pillared  doorways,  and 
with  many  of  the  houses  set,  with  no  apparent  reason, 
at  delightfully  odd  and  differing  angles. 

Italians  are  thick-crowding  up  to  this  region,  and 
near  by,  on  Bleecker  Street,  is  an  Italian  Church,  that 
of  Madonna  di  Pompei,  with  pillared  front  and  Italian 

75 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


campanile.  The  church  looks  unexpectedly  old,  con- 
sidering that  the  Italians  have  come  here  within  but 
a  few  years — and  you  find  that  the  dignified  pillared 
front  is  really  old,  and  that  it  is  the  recent  successful 
addition  of  the  slim  campanile  which  gives  the  Italian 
aspect  to  the  entire  structure ! 

Broadway  is  not  far  away:  wherever  you  are,  in 
Manhattan,  Broadway  seems  readily  reachable:  and 
not  far  from  straight  across  from  here,  and  about  as 
far  east  of  Broadway  as  this  is  west,  is  an  interesting 
church  of  another  type.  It  is  old  St.  Patrick's,  a  dull- 
gray  plastered  building,  built  over  a  hundred  years 
ago,  and  for  years  it  was  the  Eoman  Catholic  Cathe- 
dral of  the  city.  It  was  surrounded  at  first  by  an 
American  population,  then  by  the  Irish,  and  now  by 
the  Italians  who  pack  solidly  the  tenements  round 
about;  so  solidly,  that  there  are  seven  thousand  chil- 
dren of  school-age  within  the  radius  of  a  quarter  of  a 
mile.  It  faces  on  Mott  Street  and  runs  back  to  Mul- 
berry, with  its  side  towards  Prince. 

Within  the  church  is  buried  that  *^Boss"  Kelly  who 
long  ruled  Tammany  with  an  iron  and  honest  hand. 
Here,  too,  lies  that  Delmonico,  founder  of  the  line,  who 
achieved  world-wide  fame  through  catering  in  things 
gastronomic  and  costly.  And  then  comes  a  sudden 
thrill ;  for,  walking  through  the  high-walled  graveyard 
beside  the  church,  one  is  suddenly  back  in  the  Revolu- 
tion, suddenly  one  hears,  in  fancy,  the  thunder  of  can- 
non, and  sees  Paul  Jones,  off  Flamborough  Head, 
dashing  splendidly  on  the  British  in  the  **Bon  Homme 
Eichard,''  one  sees,  in  swift  fancy,  the  Frenchman, 

76 


^^MILLION-FOOTED  MANHATTAN^' 


Pierre  Landais,  in  his  own  much  larger  battleship,  not 
helping  Paul  Jones,  but  holding  off  and,  whether  by 
accident  or  design,  actually  broadsiding  the  Ameri- 
can's boat.  For  here  is  the  grave  of  poor  Landais; 
and,  according  to  the  old  inscription,  he  was  *  *  ancien 
Contre-Amiral  au  service  des  Etats  Unis,  qui  dispar- 
uit  June,  1818,  age  87  ans." 

And  there  comes  not  only  the  memory  of  that  day 
of  glory  for  Paul  Jones  and  of  disgrace  for  Landais, 
but  the  thought  of  the  lonely  suffering  of  the  long 
years  that  followed,  here  in  New  York,  for  the  French- 
man. He  was  tried  by  a  naval  committee,  none  of 
whom  understood  French,  he  himself  at  the  time  un- 
derstanding scarcely  a  word  of  English,  and  was  dis- 
missed from  the  American  service  in  disgrace.  Again 
and  again  he  sought  in  vain  for  a  rehearing,  and  for 
forty  weary  years  walked  the  streets  of  New  York  in 
proud  and  solitary  poverty,  now  and  then  donning  his 
old  Continental  uniform  on  some  great  national  occa- 
sion, but  always  looked  at  by  the  people  askance ;  and 
at  length  it  was  here,  in  old  St.  Patrick's  churchyard, 
that  the  saddened  and  friendless  man  found  rest. 

The  churches  of  New  York  add  greatly,  not  only  to 
the  interest  of  the  city,  but  to  its  looks :  and  none  have 
a  more  striking  situation  than  the  beautiful  structure 
at  Broadway  and  Tenth  Street.  It  is  Grace  Church, 
and  it  can  be  seen  from  far  down  Broadway,  for  it 
stands  where  the  great  thoroughfare  makes  a  sweep- 
ing bend,  and  it  is  a  beautifully  spired,  and  inspired, 
mass  of  white  stone,  with  the  effect,  from  a  distance, 
of  rising  in  the  very  middle  of  the  street. 

77 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


It  is  a  fine  structure,  with  a  sweetly  gracious  air; 
it  is  not  a  perched  church,  but  sits  close  to  the  ground, 
with  its  gardens  and  greenery  and  shrubs  nestled 
around  it,  and  with  its  door  opening  in  welcome  from 
the  sidewalk.  It  is  amazing  to  see  this  broad  open 
greenery  on  either  side  of  the  church  and  fronting  the 
recessed  rectory  and  tributary  church  buildings,  in 
this  busy  part  of  Broadway.  And  on  the  grass  is  a 
huge  dolium,  a  curiosity-awakening  jar,  brought  here 
from  across  the  ocean  as  if  to  prove  the  truth  of  tne 

Arabian-Nights  ^ '  and  its  tale  of  Ali  Baba  and  the 
forty  thieves  who  hid  in  jars ! 

On  the  southern  wall  of  the  church,  and  a  curious 
thing  to  find  in  America,  is  an  outside  pulpit  of  stone, 
remindful  of  the  outside  pulpit  behind  the  delightful 
cathedral  of  Tours.  This  pulpit  looks  over  an  open 
space  toward  where,  for  years,  night  after  night,  there 
gathered  the  drearily  pathetic  and  world-famous 
bread  line,  which  disappeared  with  the  passing  of  the 
kind-hearted  Austrian's  bakery  and  coffee-house  from 
that  corner. 

The  front  view  of  Grace  Church,  the  iron  fence,  the 
hedge,  the  greenery,  make  a  scene  which  became,  on 
the  stage,  the  best  known  piece  of  scene  painting  in 
America;  for  this  was  made  the  setting  for  one  of  the 
acts  in  the  *  *  Old  Homestead, ' '  a  play  which  was  played 
for  so  many  years,  and  which  became  over  and  over 
again  familiar  in  every  part  of  the  country.  The 
chimes,  too,  which  were  always  rung  when  tliis  scene 
was  presented  on  the  stage,  were  remindful  of  the 
chimes  of  this  church,  which,  sounding  so  often  and  so 

78 


MILLION-FOOTED  MANHATTAN'' 


sweetly  over  the  throngs  of  Broadway,  seem  among 
the  sweetest  chimes  in  the  world. 

The  interior  of  the  church  well  carries  out  the  in- 
terest of  the  exterior,  with  its  stone  pillars,  the  quiet 
coloring  of  the  glass  behind  the  altar,  the  admirable 
smaller  rose-window,  and  the  general  air  of  repose. 

There  never  will  be  anything  more  dramatic  than  a 
certain  funeral  procession,  in  New  York,  and  what  led 
up  to  it;  and  I  speak  of  it  here  because  I  saw  the 
funeral  when  it  was  passing  Grace  Church.  The 
setting  of  the  dramatic  story  was  in  the  romantic 
period  of  the  world — which  is  only  to  say  that  any 
period  possesses  romance,  and  that  it  only  needs  to  be 
recognized  when  it  comes. 

Henry  George,  the  Single  Taxer,  one  of  the  striking 
figures  in  American  life,  was  running  for  the  office  of 
mayor  of  New  York  in  a  fiercely  contested  campaign, 
the  first  mayoralty  campaign  of  the  Greater  City,  in 
1897.  Almost  on  the  eve  of  election  he  died,  and  there 
was  widespread  grief.  His  body  lay  in  state  and  a 
hundred  thousand  people  solemnly  passed  by.  At  the 
funeral  services  there  were  addresses  by  a  Eoman 
Catholic  priest,  a  Congregational  minister,  a  Hebrew 
Eabbi,  and  others ;  to  such  varied  minds  had  his  teach- 
ing and  personality  appealed. 

As  evening  came  on,  the  funeral  procession  moved. 
Down  Broadway  it  came,  on  its  way  to  Brooklyn  and 
Greenwood,  and  profoundly  impressive  was  the  sight 
as  the  cortege  swung  around  the  bend  of  Broadway  at 
Grace  Church.  Although  but  early  evening,  it  was 
dark.   Lights  and  shadows  seemed  mysteriously 

79 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


blended.  The  heaviest  bell  of  the  church  was  slowly 
tolling  and  the  tolling  was  sad  and  drear  and  of  tre- 
mendous solemnity.  The  body  of  the  dead  man  was 
borne  high  on  a  lofty  open  catafalque,  which  was  all 
black,  and  the  coffin  shook  and  rocked  as  the  wheels 
jolted  over  the  roughness  of  the  pavement.  Alone,  in 
front,  with  head  and  shoulders  drooping,  rode  a  man 
on  horseback,  the  chief  mourner  and  closest  friend, 
Tom  Johnson,  himself  a  figure  of  national  importance, 
but  now  likewise  gone.  Behind,  came  fifers  playing 
the  saddening  notes  of  '^Flee  as  a  bird  to  the  moun- 
tain"; and  behind  these,  marching  solemnly  between 
the  black  and  deserted  fronts  of  the  business  houses 
and  past  this  church,  there  followed  thousands  upon 
thousands  of  men  on  foot.  It  made  a  picture  of  tre- 
mendous intensity. 


80 


CHAPTER  VII 


UP  THE  BOWEKY 


EW  YORK  is  one  of  the  cities 
that  have  popular  songs  writ- 
ten about  them;  and  perhaps 
none  of  its  songs  won  such 
widespread  popularity  as  the 
one  that  goes  so  swingingly 
with  its : 

'*The  Bowery,  the  Bowery, 
They  do  such  things,  and  they  say 

such  things, 
On  the  Bowery,  the  Bowery — 
I'll  never  go  there  any  more !" 

But  of  course  what  it  meant  was,  that  everybody 
would  want  to  hurry  right  back  there;  whereupon 
it  behooved  the  Bowery  to  do  such  things  and  to  say 
such  things  as  would  give  it  the  air  of  living  up  to  its 
swaggering  and  swashbuckling  reputation,  with  even 
more  than  a  touch  of  the  desperately  dissipated  and 
criminal. 

But,  as  a  show,  on  the  basis  of  such  anticipations, 
the  Bowery  does  not  look  the  part!  It  is  an  ex- 
tremely broad  street,  with  a  line  of  elevated  tracks 
along  either  side  and  an  unusual  number  of  trolley 

81 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


tracks  down  the  middle.  It  has  quite  a  proportion 
of  saloons,  it  is  markedly  a  street  of  big  cheap  lodg- 
ing houses  for  men,  there  are  restaurants  and  pawn- 
shops, and  there  are  many  stores,  mostly  smallish 
ones;  it  looks  like  a  busy  respectable  street,  and 
that  it  even  has  banks,  gives  it,  surely,  the  final  re- 
spectable touch.  Even  the  men  and  women  who 
throng  its  sidewalks  are  disappointingly  respectable 
in  looks! 

The  wicked  glories  of  the  Bowery  of  the  past, 
partly  real  and  partly  imaginary  as  they  were,  have 
gone,  and  the  wickedness  of  to-day,  when  you  come 
to  look  into  it,  is  not  glamorous.  Wickedness,  to 
be  attractive,  seems  to  need  the  haze  of  distant  time. 
It  is  hard  to  feel  pleasantly  thrilled  over  Suicide 
Hall,''  and  Nigger  Mike's,"  and  ^^The  Bucket  of 
Blood,"  even  though  their  claims  to  fame  have  been 
eagerly  pushed.  It  is  hard  to  feel  keen  interest  in 
Sloppy  Mag  Unsky  or  Tinky-Tin  Cushman,  or  even 
in  the  man  who  set  the  example  of  bridge-jumping, 
and  on  the  strength  of  this  set  up  a  prosperous 
saloon.  However,  people  and  places  are  here,  and 
some  friendly  policeman  or  guide,  or  perhaps  the 
megaphone  man  of  a  sightseeing  car,  will  point  them 
out. 

The  fame  of  the  Bowery  of  the  past — romanti- 
cally evil,  as  it  was  in  the  past — came  largely  from  the 
evil  neighborhood  and  haunts  of  the  Five  Points  and 
Mulberry  Bend:  but  a  great  public  park  has  there 
taken  the  place  of  the  tenements  inhabited  by  the 
lowest  criminals,   and  busy  Italians  have  since 

82 


UP  THE  BOWEEY 


thronged  into  possession  of  the  present  bordering 
tenements,  and  the  Chinese  quietly  hold  their  own 
circumscribed  district,  a  patient  and  on  the  whole  a 
law-abiding  folk.  But  one  relic  of  the  past  does  still 
remain  there,  and  it  is  a  joy!  The  puller s-in * '  of 
Baxter  Street  are  still  there! — the  second-hand 
clothing  spiders  who  seize  the  passing  man  of  un- 
wariness  and,  dragging  him  indoors,  outfit  him  in 
raiment  of  which  it  can  be  justly  said  that  Solomon 
in  all  his  glory  was  not  arrayed  like  one  of  these. 
And  it  is  proper  to  refer  to  Solomon,  for  the 
men  of  these  dark  little  clothing  shops  are  of  his 
race. 

But  this  extremely  successful  race  are  more  in  evi- 
dence in  New  York  than  merely  on  little  Baxter 
Street!  To  say  that  there  are  more  Hebrews  in 
New  York  than  in  Jerusalem  would  be  to  put  it  mildly. 
There  are  more  here  than  there  are  in  any  other  city 
of  the  world.  They  occupy  great  sections  in  the  Man- 
hattan tenement  district,  they  have  a  mighty  Ghetto 
far  over  in  that  part  of  Brooklyn  known  as  Browns- 
ville. On  Broadway,  one  sees  few  business  signs  ex- 
cept those  with  Hebrew  names.  Not  only  are  there 
synagogues  for  the  poor,  but  there  are  also  those 
for  the  wealthy,  as  notably  the  one  opposite  lower 
Central  Park,  on  Fifth  Avenue.  Not  only  in  business 
but  in  real  estate  have  they  won  prominence,  for  it 
is  stated,  by  real  estate  men,  that  Hebrews  own  sixty- 
five  per  cent,  of  the  land  of  Manhattan.  And,  as  a 
race,  they  independently  aim  to  take  care  of  their  own 
charities,  and  a  much  smaller  proportion  than  those  of 

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other  races  get  their  names  into  the  records  of  the 
criminal  courts. 

On  Center  Street,  not  far  from  Mulberry  Bend,  is 
the  great  pile  of  buildings  of  the  Criminal  Courts 
and  the  Tombs.  The  famous  original  Tombs  Prison, 
however,  with  its  Egyptian-like  front,  has  been  re- 
placed by  a  modern  structure  on  the  same  spot,  but 
still  the  Venetian-like  Bridge  of  Sighs  connects  the 
courts  and  the  prison,  and  over  it  the  prisoners  pass 
to  be  tried,  and  return  across  it  if  convicted. 

The  grim  trials  known  to  evil  fame  and  eagerly  dis- 
cussed throughout  the  entire  country,  have  been  many : 
vastly  more  have  been  those  unnoticed  ones  which 
meant,  in  their  outcome,  just  as  much  to  the  individual 
as  if  millions  of  people  were  every  morning  looking 
at  their  newspapers  to  see  how  the  case  was  going. 

Frequently,  a  jury  is  ready  to  report  at  night ;  and 
when  this  is  expected,  and  the  judge  is  in  a  good 
humor,  he  will  wait  patiently  as  the  hours  creep 
slowly  by — slowly  for  the  prisoner,  at  least,  but  not 
always  so  for  the  others  interested,  for  I  have  seen 
the  judge  and  the  lawyers  on  both  sides,  with  news- 
paper men  and  perhaps  some  interested  mtnesses,  ad- 
journ to  one  of  the  near  places  of  refreshment,  and 
gaily  talk  and  banter,  while,  if  they  cared  to  think  of 
it,  and  if  any  good  could  be  done  by  thinking  of  it, 
they  would  realize  that  the  prisoner  was  frantically 
waiting. 

At  length  a  bailiff  would  come  in  with  a  whispering 
word.  All  would  straggle  back  to  the  dimly  lighted 
courtroom,  where  shadows  were  hiding  in  all  the  cor- 

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UP  THE  BOWERY 


ners  and  there  would  be  a  hurrying  ^^Hear  ye,  hear 
ye ! ' '  and  the  jury  would  file  soberly  in,  and  the  pris- 
oner would  stand  to  face  them. 

The  Bowery^'  is  an  odd  misnomer.  For  it  is  a 
Dutch  word,  pronounced  but  not  spelled  this  way,  and 
it  means  a  pleasant  suburban  home  with  a  garden. 
Governor  Petrus  Stuyvesant  had  his  Bowery,  some 
two  and  a  half  miles  north  of  the  Battery,  and  to  the 
road  which,  for  the  northern  half  of  the  distance,  led 
to  it,  was  given  its  name — the  Bowery. 

The  gallant  General  Knox  rode  down  the  Bowery 
at  the  head  of  the  first  detachment  of  the  American 
army  on  November  25, 1783,  on  his  way  to  the  Battery, 
to  take  possession  of  the  city  after  the  evacuation  by 
the  British:  he  having  been  chosen  for  the  proud 
honor  by  Washington,  who  followed  him  a  little  later, 
and  met  him,  on  his  return,  here  on  the  Bowery,  at 
what  was  to  be  its  junction  with  Canal  Street. 

At  the  upper  end  of  the  Bowery  is  the  Bible  House, 
with  its  output  of  over  seven  millions  of  Bibles  a  year, 
and  at  the  southern  end  is  dark  little  Chatham  Square, 
covered  with  elevated  tracks  and  station — and  I  re- 
member a  modern  little  sign  there,  eminently  suggest- 
ive, at  the  foot  of  a  black  little  stair,  reading  Black 
Eyes  Painted.'' 

Just  oif  the  lower  side  of  Chatham  Square,  on  a 
little,  old  and  very  dismal  street  which  has  incongru- 
ously been  given  the  name  of  the  New  Bowery,  is  the 
earliest  Jewish  graveyard  in  the  city,  dating  far  back 
to  1656.  It  is  one  of  the  loneliest,  one  of  the  gloomi- 
est places  imaginable,  and  I  never  see  it  without 

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thinking  of  the  sad  little  London  burying-ground 
where  ended  the  tragedy  of  the  mistress  of  Bleak 
House.  This  ancient  Jewish  cemetery  is  tiny  in  size, 
it  stands  a  little  above  the  present  level  of  the  side- 
walk, and  fronts  gloomily  out  beneath  the  Elevated 
tracks  which  fill  the  narrow  gloomy  street. 

Those  first  Jews  in  New  York  were  Spanish  and 
Portuguese,  and  their  records  and  tombstones  were 
inscribed  in  Spanish,  and  their  rabbis  had  romantic 
names  such  as  Pinto,  Seixas  and  Peixotto. 

Cats  now  prowl  dismally  among  the  time-blackened 
stones,  and  the  windows  of  dilapidated  tenements  look 
down  upon  them;  and  from  one  of  these  windows,  a 
third-floor  one  at  26  James  Street;  nearly  a  century 
ago — the  quarter  being  then  somewhat  better  than  at 
present — little  Joe  Jefferson,  afterwards  to  be  Eip 
Van  Winkle,  used  to  look  down  into  this  strange, 
lonely  God^s  Acre. 

Most  marked  of  any  of  the  outward  changes  in 
the  appearance  of  the  Bowery  is  that  which  has 
come  with  the  tearing  down  of  buildings  to  make  the 
plaza  and  approach,  at  Canal  Street,  for  the  great 
Manhattan  Bridge.  The  result  is  superbly  beautiful : 
great  space  has  been  taken  for  it,  and  the  work  has 
been  done  with  strength  of  conception  and  architect- 
ural impressiveness. 

The  old  Bowery  Theatre,  full  of  interesting  theat- 
rical memories,  and  knowTi  for  some  years  past  as  the 
Thalia,  looks  across  the  Bowery  at  this  sweeping 
change:  and  the  old  theatre  itself  is  doomed  shortly 
to  disappear,  to  be  replaced  by  a  modern  business 

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UP  THE  BOWERY, 


structure  of  a  kind  befitting  the  changed  looks  of  the 
neighborhood. 

It  is  well  worth  while  to  take  a  trolley  car  and  cross 
Manhattan  Bridge  in  the  early  evening,  even  if  only 
to  come  back  from  its  farther  end,  for  it  rises  over  the 
very  roofs  of  block  after  block  of  tenements,  and  you 
look  far  down  into  streets  that  look  like  narrow  slits, 
and  down  at  lighted  windows  and  busy  streets  and 
moving  throngs. 

And  the  impression  comes  of  endless  cars,  in  long 
twinkling  lines,  flitting  over  endlessly  on  the  Wil- 
liamsburg Bridge  above  and  the  old  Brooklyn  Bridge 
a  little  farther  down;  and  it  is  all  wonderfully  im- 
pressive and  tells  vividly  of  the  great  surging  life  of 
the  great  city. 

Walk  slowly  up  the  Bowery,  and  you  are  pleased 
with  the  gregarious  life  and  happiness  of  it  all.  Peo- 
ple are  bustling,  crowding,  thronging,  but  all  are  quiet 
and  orderly.  Seldom  is  any  one  boisterous  or  drunk. 
The  policemen,  so  quiet  and  capable,  are  just  quietly 
looking  on,  ready  to  help  or  to  answer  questions.  An 
old  man  with  two  heavy  valises  gets  dazedly  off  a  car, 
looks  dazedly  about,  is  lost.  Instantly  a  policeman 
is  beside  him,  genially  and  capably  helping  him,  put- 
ting confidence  into  him,  directing  him.  Not  always 
the  wicked  Bowery  of  tradition,  one  realizes. 

At  the  end  of  the  Bowery,  at  a  cobweb  centre  of 
streets,  rises  the  shapeless  bulk  of  Cooper  Union.  It 
was  founded  long  ago  by  Peter  Cooper  and  has  done 
great  good  through  its  many  and  varied  classes,  its 
generous  aid  to  those  who  are  struggling  and  ambi- 

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tious.  For  use  in  connection  with  the  work  of  the 
School  of  Design,  a  notable  collection  has  been  gath- 
ered of  the  fine  old  furniture  of  early  days,  and  there 
are  also  admirable  details  of  early  woodwork  and 
metal  work. 

The  great  reading  room  of  Cooper  Union,  with  its 
myriad  of  newspapers  from  myriad  cities,  is  one  of 
the  sights  of  New  York,  crowded  as  it  is  with  the 
homeless  and  the  homesick,  and  with  strangers  eager 
to  read  the  news  from  their  home-towns. 

The  meeting  hall  on  the  lower  floor  has  long  been  a 
place  for  men  of  advanced  ideas,  or  at  least  of  ideas 
different  from  those  currently  received — the  two 
things  not  being  at  all  necessarily  the  same!  The 
listeners  are  likely  to  be  of  the  class  often  referred  to 
as  the  *^half -baked'';  blind  gropers  after  a  knowledge 
that  has  been  denied  them;  and,  looking  in  at  some 
meeting  there,  you  will  notice  the  tense  eager  look,  the 
look  of  mental  hunger,  on  the  faces  of  those  who  crowd 
the  front  rows. 

It  is  a  hall  that  is  also  associated  with  important 
movements.  Although  itself  without  dignity  of  as- 
pect, there  have  been  famous  meetings  here,  most  not- 
able being  the  one  addressed  by  Abraham  Lincoln 
shortly  before  his  nomination  for  the  Presidency, when 
he  was  an  unknown  figure  looming  like  a  nightmare  to 
the  well-tailored  East.  One  who  heard  him  has  told 
me  of  the  solemn  and  immense  effect  of  his  great 
speech;  of  how  he  began  haltingly,  even  awkwardly, 
but  of  how  he  gathered  strength  and  ease,  and  went 
magnificently  on. 

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UP  THE  BOWERYi 


But  when  the  meeting  was  over  Lincoln  was  still 
but  a  nightmare.  He  was  not  yet  a  prophet.  He 
was  not  yet  a  leader,  here  in  the  East,  away  from  his 
own  region.  All  felt  the  impulse  to  draw  away  from 
this  tall,  gaunt,  ill-dressed,  earnest  man — for  earnest- 
ness always  jars  unless  you  are  earnest  yourself,  and 
it  always  jars  the  smug,  the  satisfied,  the  complacent. 
One  man,  so  the  story  runs,  led  Lincoln  to  a  street 
car  and  put  him  aboard,  saying  that  a  youth,  also 
boarding  the  car  at  that  moment,  would  show  him  the 
way  to  his  hotel;  but  within  a  few  blocks  the  young 
man  himself,  ashamed  of  the  tall  companion  who  had 
been  given  him,  slipped  away,  after  murmuring  that 
the  car  would  go  to  the  side  entrance  of  the  Astor 
House. 

And  so,  after  a  speech  that  was  to  arouse,  in  the 
reading  of  it,  admiration  and  amazement,  and  which 
is  memorable  even  to  this  day,  the  great  Lincoln,  de- 
serted and  alone,  was  jolted  slowly  on,  in  a  gloomy 
horse-car,  to  the  side  entrance  of  his  hotel ! 

Two  or  three  minutes'  walk  from  the  northern  end 
of  the  Bowery,  is  St.  Mark's  Church:  *^St.  Marks-in- 
the-Bowery,"  as  it  is  still  often  called  by  old  New 
Yorkers. 

**They  say,"  and  it  used  really  to  be  believed  by 
many  and  perhaps  is  even  yet  believed  by  some,  that 
the  ghost  of  old  Petrus  Stuyvesant  still  imperatively 
walks  the  aisles  of  this  ancient  church.  Not  that  the 
church,  old  as  it  is — it  was  built  in  1799 — goes  back  so 
far  as  Stuyvesant 's  own  time,  for  he  died  over  a  cen- 
tury earlier  than  that,  but  that  it  stands  on  property 

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that  he  owned,  and  on  the  site  of  a  chapel  that  he 
built,  and  that  his  tomb,  with  an  inscription  plainly 
to  be  read  from  the  outside  of  the  church,  on  one  of 
the  foundation  stones,  is  beneath  the  floor,  close  to 
the  eastern  side. 

The  original  chapel  was  of  course  Dutch,  and  it  was 
specifically  given  by  Stuyvesant 's  widow  to  the  Dutch 
Collegiate  Church,  which,  however,  declined  to  accept 
the  property,  not  feeling  the  need  for  it,  and  in  1793 
a  great-grandson  of  the  great  Petrus  offered  it  to 
Trinity  Corporation,  and  the  property  thus  became 
Episcopalian,  and  the  present  church  was  built. 

It  is  a  broad-fronted  church,  all  in  browns,  situated 
in  the  midst  of  a  green  space  at  the  junction  of  Second 
Avenue  and  Stuyvesant  Street.  It  stands  sedately 
above  the  level  of  the  sidewalk,  with  a  broad  open 
graveyard  space  on  either  side,  and  all  about  it  are 
green  grass  and  great  trees  and  shrubs,  with  singing 
birds  and  a  general  airy  pleasantness,  and  Japanese 
ivy  growing  lush  upon  its  walls.  It  is  comfortable,  it 
is  pleasing  and,  in  spite  of  being  rather  squat,  it  is 
highly  pictorial.  In  fact,  it  is  an  exceedingly  pictorial 
reminder  of  long-past  time.  The  stone  lions  sitting 
inside  of  the  portico  of  this  extremely  old-fashioned 
church  seem  oddly  incongruous,  but,  after  all,  they 
achieve  interest  the  moment  one  thinks  of  them  as 

Lions  of  St.  Mark's." 

The  church  is  now  quite  away  from  the  homes  of 
its  natural  congregation,  but  now  and  then  it  is  filled 
to  overflowing  on  some  special  occasion.  But  I  re- 
member dropping  in  one  week-day  and  finding  the  rec- 

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UP  THE  BOWERY 


tor  going  through  the  full  service  with  only  one  man 
in  the  large  interior  to  make  responses,  and  the  or- 
ganist to  play.  Besides  the  one  man  there  was,  in- 
deed, a  poor  cripple,  but  he  had  only  humbly  crept  in 
and  sat  very  silent  and  very  still  and  was  obviously 
desirous  to  efface  himself.  At  another  time,  when  the 
church  was  also  empty  and  when  no  service  at  all 
was  in  progress,  I  noticed  a  lady  there  whom  I  knew 
to  be  the  great-granddaughter  of  an  old-time  New 
York  governor,  a  very  great  man  in  his  day,  whom 
they  honored  by  burying  near  the  sturdy  Stuyvesant ; 
she  had  slipped  in  with  gentle  inconspicuousness,  and 
somehow  it  seemed  to  give  a  sweet  and  charming  con- 
nection between  the  vanished  past  and  the  present 
day,  to  see  her  kneeling  where  for  generations  her 
forebears  had  knelt. 

It  is  odd  that  Stuyvesant  should  be  so  often  called 
Peter.  Assuredly,  he  did  not  call  himself  Peter,  and 
I  do  not  see  why  any  one  else  should  use  the  name. 
His  name  was  Petrus,  and  it  was  often  enough  signed 
to  New  York  decrees  and  ordinances  to  fix  it  perma- 
nently in  the  mind  of  the  city.  But  there  has  been  an 
odd,  although  quite  unintentional  revenge;  for  the 
Dutch,  in  the  use  of  the  name  of  Hudson,  who  was  an 
Englishman  of  the  plain  English  name  of  Henry,  long 
ago  gave  him  the  Dutch  form  of  Hendry ck,  and  many 
English  and  Americans  took  this  form  from  the  Dutch, 
and  in  books  and  records,  and  even  yet,  and  fre- 
quently, in  conversation  among  New  Yorkers,  the 
name  of  Hendryck  Hudson  is  still  absurdly  re- 
ferred to. 

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The  interior  of  the  church  is  notably  broad,  with  a 
vaulted  roof,  with  windows  rich  in  new  colored  glass, 
with  seven-branched  candlesticks,  with  the  Stations  of 
the  Cross  upon  the  walls. 

The  whimsical,  irascible,  tyrannical  and  highly  hon- 
orable wooden-legged  Petrus  stumped  through  early 
New  York  so  dominantly  that  he  is  still  vaguely 
thought  of  as  a  sort  of  legendary  good  spirit  of  the 
city.  He  had  fought  in  the  European  wars,  and  the 
wooden  leg  which  came  from  one  of  the  old  battles, 
and  which  was  often  described  as  silver  because  it  was 
silver-banded,  and  which  threatened  to  put  an  end  to 
his  picturesque  career,  merely  had  the  effect  of  send- 
ing him  to  win  greater  fame  in  America  than  ever 
would  have  been  his  in  the  long-forgotten  campaigns 
of  Germany  and  the  Netherlands. 

That  he  was  captain-general — good  old  name! — 
and  governor-in-chief,  and  that  he  died  in  1682,  at 
the  age  of  eighty :  this  may  be  read  on  the  outside  face 
of  the  ancient  tomb,  there  in  the  foundation  of  the 
present  church.  He  was  governor  from  1647  to  1664, 
in  which  latter  year  there  descended  upon  the  colony 
an  overwhelming  English  force. 

For  a  time,  Stuyvesant  would  not  consider  surren- 
der. **As  touching  your  threats,''  he  wrote  to  the 
English  commander,  **we  have  nothing  to  answer,  only 
that  we  fear  nothing  but  what  God,  who  is  as  just  as 
He  is  merciful,  may  lay  upon  us. ' ' 

But  surrender  at  length  was  needful,  and,  bitterly 
disappointed  and  chagrined,  Stuyvesant  retired  to  his 
**bouwerie"  here. 

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UP  THE  BOWERY 

His  property  extended  from  the  East  River  as  far 
as  what  is  now  known  as  Fourth  Avenue,  and  an  old 
pear  tree  that  he  set  out  at  the  corner  of  what  is  now 
Third  Avenue  and  13th  Street  bore  fruit  for  over  two 
centuries,  growing  more  and  more  ancient  looking  and 
gnarled  and  giving  promise  of  another  century  or  so 
of  life,  even  though  it  stood  in  a  circle  within  the  side- 
walk area.  But  not  very  many  years  ago  a  careless 
driver  ran  a  heavy  truck  against  it  and  knocked  it 
down,  and  that  was  the  end  of  the  ancient  tree.  The 
place  where  it  stood  is  still  marked,  and  policemen 
will  tell  you  that  visitors,  and  even  New  Yorkers, 
walking  from  curiosity  over  in  this  interesting  sec- 
tion, will  still  ask  to  be  shown  the  Stuyvesant  pear 
tree,  in  the  belief  that  it  is  still  growing  there. 

After  the  surrender  of  1664,  the  disappointed  Stuy- 
vesant went  to  Holland  to  explain  in  person  the  cir- 
cumstances of  his  unavoidable  surrender  of  New  Am- 
sterdam. It  had  intensely  humiliated  him;  he  felt 
that  if  he  had  been  properly  supported  from  Holland 
the  surrender  need  not  have  been  made ;  and  after  his 
explanation  he  returned  to  his  **bouwerie"  in  his  be- 
loved New  York,  for  the  city  was  still  warm  in  his 
affections  in  spite  of  the  change  in  government  and 
in  name ;  and  it  was  on  this  trip  that  he  brought  with 
him  the  pear  tree,  then  but  a  tiny  little  thing,  the 
merest  of  saplings,  and  he  planted  it  as  a  memorial  by 
which,  he  said,  he  hoped  to  be  remembered:  grimly 
cynical,  he  thought  that  this  tiny  sapling  would  better 
preserve  his  fame  than  the  seventeen  years  of  gover- 
norship that  had  ended  only  in  disaster. 

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THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


And  all  this  sets  the  mind  into  the  backward  and 
abysm  of  time,  for  the  career  of  Stuyvesant,  who  is  so 
close  to  the  New  York  of  to-day  that  even  the  stories 
of  his  imperative  ghost  still  linger,  makes  the  city 
itself  seem  so  old !  For  he  was  a  boy  of  seven  years 
when  Manhattan  Island  was  seen  by  Hudson  in  1609 : 
he  was  a  lad  of  eleven  when  a  few  huts  were  put  up 
here  by  Adrian  Block  in  1613 ;  he  was  just  entering  on 
his  twenties  when  the  place  was  given  what  may  be 
termed  casual  settlement,  in  1624,  by  several  families 
out  of  a  shipload  of  Dutch  who  were  really  intended 
for  the  older  settlement  of  Albany :  and  he  had  reached 
the  age  of  twenty-four  when,  little  suspecting  that  he 
himself  was  to  go  to  Manhattan  and  be  an  important 
figure  there,  the  place  was  formally  settled  by  families 
intentionally  taking  their  household  goods  to  the  spot. 
He  was  born  when  Henry  of  Navarre  was  King  of 
France,  when  Elizabeth  was  Queen  of  England,  in  the 
year  in  which  Hamlet"  was  written:  he  was  made 
governor  here  by  the  Dutch,  when  England  was  un- 
der Cromwell:  he  died  in  the  reign  of  Charles  the 
Second.  And  yet  it  is  customary  to  think  of  New 
York  as  a  new  city  in  a  new  country ! 

There  is  an  admirable  recent  monument  to  Stuy- 
vesant, set  close  beside  the  porch  of  this  church  of  St. 
Mark's-in-the-Bowery;  a  monument  of  broad-curving 
gray  stone,  surmounted  by  the  bust  of  the  irascible 
Petrus  in  bronze;  but  his  body  does  not  lie  beneath 
this  monument,  but  is  within  and  below  the  inscribed 
foundation  wall,  over  which  ivy  long  ago  began  to 
clamber. 

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UP  THE  BOWERY 


Not  only  is  Governor  Stuyvesant  buried  here,  but 
here  too,  and  by  the  strangest  of  chances  in  the  very 
same  vault,  is  Governor  Sloughter,  the  man  who,  as 
if  changing  **o''  to  *'a,"  unjustly  had  poor  Governor 
Leisler  killed,  with  the  formalities  of  justice.  Also 
here,  but  not  in  the  same  vault  with  those  two  early 
rulers  who  are  so  strangely  set  cheek  by  jowl,  is  that 
famous  Governor  Tompkins,  who  was  long  known  as 
the  war  governor,  because  of  his  being  the  chief  ex- 
ecutive of  the  State  during  the  War  of  1812,  and  who 
was  also  Vice-President  of  the  United  States. 

Old  St.  Mark's  makes  so  harmonious  a  whole  that  it 
seems  odd  that,  although  the  main  building  was 
erected  from  1795  to  1799,  the  portico — ^which  makes 
the  church  look  like  St.  Martin 's-in-the-Fields,  on 
Trafalgar  Square — ^was  actually  not  constructed  until 
the  uninspired  time  of  1858,  and  that  the  steeple  of 
this  so  homogeneous  structure  was  set  up  intermedi- 
ately, in  1829;  and  the  calm  preciseness  of  St.  Mark's 
is  vastly  accentuated  by  the  calm  preciseness  of  this 
steeple,  running  up,  as  it  does,  in  lessening  squares,  to 
a  square-cornered  and  sharply  pyramidal  shaft, 
topped  with  a  round  gilt  ball  and  a  weather-vane. 

The  home  of  Petrus,  that  he  so  loved,  and  to  which 
he  came  back  to  live  even  though  he  must  live  under 
an  alien  government,  stood  near  this  old  church,  and 
here  he  ended  his  life  in  patriarchal  dignity. 

Each  year,  on  the  anniversary  of  the  day  on  which, 
as  captain-general,  he  had  fought  and  overcome  the 
Swedes — how  curious  to  know  that  there  was  ever 
such  a  conflict  on  American  soil! — there  was  always 

95 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


a  gala  celebration  on  his  place ;  and  as  it  was  on  April 
the  First,  Stuyvesant  always  saw  to  it  that  there  were 
simple  April  First  jests  upon  his  ancient  servants, 
negroes  whom  he  had  kept  about  him  for  years. 

Whenever  Stuyvesant  sat  down,  it  was  with  his 
back  to  New  York  City,  for  its  loss  had  caused  him 
much  bitterness: — but  if  his  ghost  should  now  sit 
down  (and  Scrooge  thought  that  Marley's  couldn't!) 
it  would  find  it  difficult  to  turn  its  back  on  New  York ! 

When  Stuyvesant  died,  it  seemed  as  if  every  one  in 
the  colony,  Dutch  and  English  alike,  came  to  the  Bou- 
werie  to  follow  his  body  in  its  short  journey  to  the 
grave :  and  notable  among  the  mourners  in  their  piti- 
ful grief,  were  the  gray-haired  servants,  his  old 
negroes. 


96 


CHAPTER  VIII 

SOME  CONTRASTS  OF  THE  CITY 


HEN  one  thinks  of  the  con- 
trasts of  New  York  it  seems 
as  if  it  is  peculiarly  a  city 
of  contrasts,  almost  a  city 
that  is  all  contrast:  what- 
ever you  see,  you  may  also 
see  its  opposite. 


No  city  shows  quite  such 
contrasts  as  that  of  the  very 
richest  men  in  the  world  and 
men  of  absolute  poverty :  the 


greatest  philanthropists,  the  greatest  givers  of  money 
in  all  the  world,  and  the  greatest  criminals :  no  other 
city  can  show  such  a  total  of  motor-cars  and  motor 
trucks  as  New  York :  yet  there  are  countless  numbers 
among  the  throngs  on  the  sidewalks  who  have  never 
ridden  in  a  motor — there  are  no  jitneys  in  New  York 
— and  within  recent  years  a  sight  has  become  com- 
mon, in  the  best  business  sections,  that  used  to  be 
rare  except  in  the  tenement  streets ;  that  of  little  carts 
piled  high  with  merchandise  and  pushed  by  men. 

No  other  city  in  the  world  has  so  many  and  so 
varied  types  of  humanity,  and  in  such  vast  numbers. 


97 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


No  other  city  shows  such  miles  and  miles  of  crowded 
life,  and  totals  of  massed  humanity,  yet  in  no  other 
city  is  there  so  much  of  loneliness.  The  extent  to 
which  loneliness  is  prevalent  is  amazing.  The  number 
of  rich  and  well-to-do  and  poor,  not  the  homeless  but 
those  with  homes,  who  know  nobody,  who  have  no 
callers  and  who  never  call,  whose  only  social  diver- 
sions are  found  in  the  theatres,  the  restaurants,  the 
parks,  the  streets,  is  utterly  amazing. 

The  great  stores  of  New  York  are  the  greatest  in 
the  world,  as  to  cost  of  buildings,  number  of  em- 
ployees, value  of  stock  and  volume  of  business,  yet  at 
the  same  time  there  are  thousands  of  little,  mussy, 
poorly  equipped  local  shops,  and  many  an  attractive 
little  shop  as  well. 

No  part  of  the  world  is  more  busy,  and  at  the  same 
time  more  thronged,  than  the  district  of  lower  Broad- 
way and  Wall  Street  and  the  wholesale  district,  dur- 
ing the  day;  and  nowhere  in  the  world  is  there  a 
business  district  so  deserted,  so  silent,  so  without 
life  except  for  the  solitary  and  infrequent  policeman, 
as  the  mile  after  mile  of  this  district  at  night.  No- 
where in  the  world  are  there  such  lofty  business 
structures  and  apartment  houses,  yet  these  are  bor- 
dered and  interspersed  with  buildings  of  ordinary 
height:  there  are  two-story  buildings  that  have  held 
their  own  while  business  has  mounted  to  the  sky  be- 
side them,  and  there  are  even  vacant  lots.  There  are 
the  most  expensive  specialists,  in  medicine  and  sur- 
gery, and  there  are  hospitals  with  the  most  expensive 

98 


SOME  CONTRASTS  OF  THE  CITY 


and  modern  equipment  where  surgical  and  medical 
aid  is  given  free. 

There  is  the  greatest  and  most  reckless  spending 
in  the  world,  and  there  is  the  most  pinching  economy. 
You  may  stand  beside  some  wealthy  woman  who 
negligently  orders  furs  or  gowns  costing  thousands, 
and  in  a  few  minutes  may  be  in  a  shop  where  you 
will  hear  a  poor  child,  who  is  buying  a  loaf  of  stale 
bread  and  a  penny's  worth  of  cheese,  say  to  the  clerk. 
Mother  wants  you  to  cut  it  with  the  ham  knife  to 
give  it  a  hammy  taste. ' ' 

While  reckless  spenders  outdo  one  another  in  ex- 
pensiveness — and  it  was  estimated  just  before  the 
war  that  a  million  and  a  quarter  of  dollars  was  spent 
every  evening  in  New  York  for  dinners  at  the  great 
hotels  and  restaurants — the  careful  savers  have  been 
daily  increasing  the  immense  totals  in  the  savings 
banks.  While  the  spending  idlers,  children  of  the 
wealthy,  increasingly  rival  in  number  the  wealthy 
young  idlers  that  marked  the  life  of  London  before 
the  great  war,  the  number  is  also  increasing  of  those 
who  toil  and  snip  and  baste  and  press  and  patch  and 
sponge  in  sweat-shops  wet  and  depressive  with  steam. 
While  the  number  increases  of  those  who  with  diffi- 
culty find  ways  to  spend  their  money,  the  number 
also  increases  of  those  with  no  money  to  spend:  I 
have  seen  the  policemen,  after  midnight,  moving  stol- 
idly from  park  bench  to  park  bench,  effectually  rous- 
ing the  homeless  sleepers  by  blows  upon  their  feet: 
I  have  seen  the  derelicts  disappear  doubtfully  into 

99 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


the  darkness :  one  cold  morning  at  City  Hall  Park,  I 
saw  two  poor  fellows,  pathetically  anxious  to  keep  up 
their  appearance,  wash  themselves  at  the  fountain, 
wipe  themselves  with  grimy  handkerchiefs,  and  then 
step  into  the  post-office  to  dry  the  handkerchiefs  on  a 
radiator  in  the  corridor.  And  I  have  heard  rich  New 
Yorkers  boast  offensively  of  their  riches. 

In  some  degree,  such  contrasts  are  to  be  observed 
in  other  cities;  but  in  none  so  strikingly  as  in  New 
York.  And  often  the  contrasts  are  vivid.  I  have 
seen  an  archbishop  of  New  York,  at  his  silver  jubilee, 
the  central  figure  of  a  magnificent  service  in  the  Ca- 
thedral, with  hundreds  of  the  priesthood  and  of 
churchly  dignitaries,  of  this  and  other  cities,  in  his 
train,  with  pomp  of  silk  and  purple  and  cloth  of  gold, 
with  the  sounding  of  great  bells,  and  the  triumphant 
pealing  of  the  organ  and  the  sound  of  singing  voices 
and  the  music  of  the  horns  and  cymbals  and  strings 
of  a  great  orchestra,  and  with  a  mighty  congregation 
packing  every  inch  of  the  edifice ;  and  I  have  seen  the 
same  archbishop  conducting  a  service  in  the  chapel 
on  BlackwelPs  Island,  looking  with  tears  in  his  eyes 
at  the  massed  array  of  paupers  and  prisoners  and 
crippled  and  blind,  but  dressed  in  his  splendid  robes, 
in  cope  and  surplice  and  stole  of  cloth  of  gold,  and 
with  a  mighty  golden  mitre  upon  his  head,  and  in  his 
hand  a  golden  crozier,  to  show  that  high  mass  on 
BlackwelPs  was  the  same  as  on  Fifth  Avenue.  In- 
stead of  great  reverberant  bells,  a  little  bell  in  a  little 
green-slatted  cupola  rang  forth  its  summons:  in- 
stead of  splendid  organ  and  orchestra  and  choir,  there 

100 


SOME  CONTRASTS  OF  THE  CITY 


were  a  crippled  player  at  an  old  melodeon,  and  a  choir  ] 

of  four  blind  and  crippled  derelicts:  and  I  noticed  i 

that  the  tin  vessels,  just  inside  of  the  entrance,  for 

the  holy  water,  were  soon  dipped  empty,  and  it  was  ' 

pitiful  to  see  the  late  comers  groping  eagerly  in 

the  dry  vessels  for  the  water  which  they  could  not 

find.  j 

As  New  York  has  always  been  ready  with  con-  1 
trasts,  I  shall  dip  back  into  the  past  for  one,  and 
speak  of  that  wonderful  day  of  June  25,  1775,  when 
Washington,  on  his  way  to  assume  command  of  the  i 
Revolutionary  army,  crossed  from  the  Jersey  shore 
to  Manhattan  and  received  an  ovation;  he  was  re- 
ceived by  cheering  people,  he  was  driven  through  the  i 
city  in  an  open  carriage,  drawn  by  white  horses ;  and  ' 
the  royal  governor,  Tryon,  fearfully  witnessed  Wash- 
ington's crossing  of  the  river  from  a  ship  anchored 
in  midstream,  but  did  not  dare  land  until  nightfall,  ! 
and  then  went,  neglected  by  the  people,  to  his  home  j 
— and  this,  though  it  was  more  than  a  year  before  I 
the  signing  of  the  Declaration,  and  although  Tryon  | 
was  a  man  who  had  won  a  reputation  for  ruthless  | 
hangings  in  the  course  of  his  governorship  of  North  | 
Carolina.  i 

New  York,  representative  as  it  is  in  the  highest  j 
degree  of  the  eminently  practical,  has  at  the  same  1 
time  always  possessed  emotional  possibilities,  and 
a  favorite  form  of  expression  has  been  that  of 
riots.  ; 

As  far  back  as  1788  there  were  savage  riots,  still 
kno\vn  as  Doctors'  Riots,  in  the  course  of  which  a  ; 

101  ' 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


number  were  killed  and  wounded,  the  cause  being  ru- 
mors that  bodies  were  stolen  and  dissected.  So  in- 
tensely wrought  up  were  the  people  that  when  the 
great  Baron  Steuben  and  John  Jay  went  out  to  calm 
them,  these  distinguished  men  were  incontinently 
driven  away  with  volleys  of  stones.  In  1834  there 
were  serious  Anti-Slavery  riots;  and  in  that  same 
year,  as  if  to  give  variety,  there  was  the  odd  happen- 
ing of  a  stone-cutters'  riot,  which  came  about  be- 
cause of  the  refusal,  for  some  strange  reason,  of  the 
workmen  to  use  marble  as  a  building  material. 

One  of  the  worst  riots  was  that  of  1849,  in  Astor 
Place,  the  basis  of  this  being  the  jealousy  between  the 
friends  of  two  actors,  Forrest,  an  American,  and  Mac- 
ready,  an  Englishman.  Forrest,  so  it  was  believed, 
when  in  England,  had  been  slighted  through  Mac- 
ready's  efforts,  and  so  Macready  was  regarded  with 
ill-will  when  he  next  came  to  this  country.  On  the 
same  evening  each  of  these  actors  was  to  play  Mac- 
beth— oddly  enough,  not  even  a  play  in  which  a  man 
was  the  leading  character  was  chosen! — and  there 
came  a  riotous  demonstration  against  Macready;  a 
fight  developed,  and  the  militia  were  called  out,  and 
twenty-two  people  were  killed  and  a  great  number 
injured.  The  Draft  Eiots  of  1863,  with  their  horrible 
burnings  and  tortures  and  outrages  and  lynchings, 
with  over  a  thousand  people  killed  and  numerous 
buildings  destroyed,  made  one  of  the  worst  outbreaks 
that  ever  disgraced  any  city. 

Far  back  in  1837  there  was  a  bread  riot,  caused  by 

102 


SOME  CONTRASTS  OF  THE  CITY 


the  high  price  of  flour,  and  some  shops  were  broken 
into  and  flour  was  thrown  out  into  the  streets  and 
destroyed.  Just  eighty  years  after  this,  in  1917, 
there  were  demonstrations  almost  serious  enough  to 
call  riots,  caused  by  a  great  rise  in  the  prices  of  foods 
of  all  kinds ;  and  disorderly  throngs  gathered  and  had 
to  be  dispersed. 

I  saw  one  evening  a  most  dramatic  sight  on  Fifth 
Avenue.  The  poor,  aroused  by  the  leaping  upwards 
of  food  cost  to  well-nigh  impossible  prices,  had  for 
several  days  been  gathering  in  their  o^vn  quarters 
and  had  even  gone  so  far  as  to  beseech  help  of  the 
mayor.  Immigrants,  most  of  them,  from  autocratic 
Russia  or  the  Slavic  lands,  they  had  been  brought  up 
to  believe  their  immediate  ruler  to  be  the  wielder  of 
power  and  the  dispenser  of  aid;  but  they  had  not 
found  the  help  they  needed,  and  it  was  whispered 
among  them  that  a  greater  man  than  the  mayor,  the 
Governor — and  they  liked  the  word  Governor — 
was  to  be  one  evening  at  a  great  Fifth  Avenue  hotel ; 
and  so  as  evening  came  on  I  saw  them  gathering,  al- 
most all  women,  and  almost  all  with  children  in  their 
arms,  gathering  silent  and  sad,  and  kept  moving  by 
the  police,  but  every  few  rods  halting  in  groups  of 
perhaps  a  score  or  so,  listening  to  some  one  of  the 
group,  until  the  police  roughly  bade  them  again  to 
go  on. 

There  were  hundreds  and  hundreds,  perhaps  there 
were  thousands,  a  doleful  and  woebegone  sight. 
*^Bread!^'  was  their  cry,  and  the  wailing  infants 

103 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


seemed  to  echo  it.  Tlie  women  did  not  see  the  Gov- 
ernor; they  were  hustled  and  pushed  and  rudely  or- 
dered about;  after  a  while  they  crept  off  to  their 
homes  like  animals  to  their  lairs;  and  I  thought,  it 
was  sights  like  this  which,  in  Paris,  preceded  the 
French  Revolution,  although  the  gay  and  the  rich  ate 
brioche  and  paid  no  heed,  and  thought  the  complain- 
ing poor  only  uninteresting  and  tiresome. 

This  highly  practical  city  is  always  delightfully 
ready  with  romance.  A  gloomy  old  mansion,  which 
only  within  recent  years  was  destroyed,  stood  on 
Broadway,  south  of  Madison  Square,  with  a  broad 
yard  beside  it  within  which  was  a  walled  garden ;  and 
with  the  effort  of  a  little  neck-stretching,  or  from  the 
vantage  point  of  a  carriage,  one  could  see  why  it  was 
that  the  place  was  kept  up.  For  it  was  not,  pri- 
marily, for  the  sake  of  maintaining  a  home  on  Broad- 
way;  it  was  more  for  the  care  of  a  peacock  and  a  cow! 
It  was  a  Goelet  mansion;  so  no  wonder  it  was  a 
Goelet  who  married  the  Duke  of  Roxburghe  and  thus 
acquired,  as  a  home,  the  castle  of  Floors,  with  its 
park  filled  with  deer,  and  with  its  estate  enclosed  by 
the  longest  private  stone  wall  in  Great  Britain:  re- 
minder of  the  wall  for  the  live-stock  of  Broad- 
way! 

On  Fifth  Avenue,  a  little  south  of  42nd  Street,  is 
a  vacant  lot  beside  a  private  house ;  and  the  lot  was 
kept  open,  beside  this  house,  to  be  a  play-space  for  a 
much-loved  dog,  although  the  otherwise  unused  bit  of 
land  represented  the  investment  of  immense  potential 

104 


SOME  CONTEASTS  OF  THE  CITY 


capital.  Well,  the  dog  is  dead  now,  and  the  owner  is 
dead,  and  so  the  lot  may  at  any  time  be  built  up. 

The  old  Van  Beuren  house  on  West  14th  Street, 
particularly  gloomy  and  black  as  it  was,  stood  there 
before  retail  trade  came  sweeping  northward  with  its 
immense  tide  of  prosperity  and  its  numberless  build- 
ings ;  and  it  still  stands  there,  the  only  private  house 
in  that  region,  and  about  it  are  still  the  great  green 
grounds,  facing  now  the  ebbing  of  that  wonderful 
business  tide  as  years  ago  it  faced  the  flow ;  and  at  the 
back  of  the  huge  old  garden,  with  its  moribund  trees 
and  shrubs,  is  an  old  carriage  house  with  arched 
doors,  and  over  these  arches  is  a  series  of  small  open- 
ings through  which,  a  strange  sight  for  that  dis- 
trict, pigeons  still  constantly  pass  in  and  out :  doubt- 
less, pigeons  of  a  long  line  of  inherited  Knicker- 
bocker blood! 

Of  the  human  romance  in  this  city  which  is  mis- 
takenly supposed  to  think  of  nothing  but  the  making 
of  money  or  the  spending  of  it,  that  too  is  likely  to 
be  typically  away  from  the  usual.  It  would  be  hard 
to  find  anything  much  more  romantic  than  the  way 
in  which  a  short-story  writer  of  New  York  carried 
on  his  courtship,  for,  happening  to  be  in  London  and 
becoming  engaged  by  mail  to  the  girl  he  loved,  who 
at  the  time  happened  to  be  in  Chicago,  he  sent  a  mes- 
senger boy  bearing  the  engagement  ring  from  Eng- 
land to  America,  as  naturally  as  if  it  were  just  around 
the  corner.  If,  afterwards,  divorce  soon  came — well, 
perhaps  even  that  is  not  entirely  untypical  of  present- 

105 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


day  conditions,  at  least  among  such  of  the  New  York- 
ers as  live  swiftly  and  feverishly :  and  if  to  this  it  be 
added  that  the  writer  died  in  the  full  flush  of  life, 
barely  on  the  threshold  of  middle  age,  that  also  may 
be  deemed  typical  of  New  York. 


106 


CHAPTER  IX 


AMONG  THE  TENEMENTS 

ROADLY  speaking,  the  tene- 
ments of  New  York  are  on 
the  East  Side  of  the  city: 
there  is  enough  of  truth  in 
the  idea  to  justify  the  com- 
mon interchangeableness  of 
' '  East  Side ' '  and '  ^  Tenement 
district"  in  ordinary  talk. 
But  there  is  no  truth  at  all  in 
the  equally  prevalent  idea 
that  the  tenement  region  represents  little  besides 
poverty  or  ignorance  or  crime  or  all  three,  with  a 
practical  absence  of  the  broadening  or  intelligently 
pleasurable  features  of  life. 

An  author  died,  on  the  East  Side,  in  1916 — an  au- 
thor not  known  to  the  city  in  general,  but  whose 
works,  in  Yiddish,  were  familiar  to  a  myriad  of  read- 
ers. An  immense  throng  packed  the  streets  through 
which  his  funeral  procession  moved,  the  people  stand- 
ing reverently,  in  a  weird  silence.  And  as  to  what 
kind  of  a  man  this  was,  this  Sholem  ben  Menachem 
Rabinowitz,  or  Sholem  Aleichem  as  he  was  known, 
who  had  such  a  devoted  following  while  living  and 

107 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


such  masses  of  mourners  when  dead,  his  will  may  be 
deemed  illuminative,  for  it  began : 

Wherever  I  die  I  want  to  be  placed  not  among 
aristocrats  or  among  the  powerful,  but  among  plain 
Jewish  laborers,  among  the  very  people  itself,  so  that 
the  simple  graves  about  me  should  adorn  my  grave- 
stone even  as  the  plain  good  people  during  my  life- 
time illumined  their  f olkes-schreiber. " 

After  all,  it  should  be  remembered  that  there  are 
a  million  Jews  in  Greater  New  York :  many  times  the 
total  population,  including  all  races,  of  Jerusalem, 
and  three  times  as  many  Jews  as  has  Warsaw,  the 
city  next  to  New  York  in  Jewish  population. 

And  to  know  that  such  a  man  as  Sholem  Aleichem 
was  an  idol  of  the  tenement  dwellers  is  to  revise  for- 
ever the  commonly  held  beliefs  as  to  the  standards  of 
the  tenements. 

But  it  is  not  necessary  to  go  from  one  extreme  of 
belief  to  the  other :  it  is  not  needful  to  deem  the  tene- 
ment districts  all  admirable,  merely  because  it  is  a 
mistake  to  deem  them  all  the  reverse  of  admirable. 
Yet  it  is  well  to  know  that  a  great  part  of  the  East  Side 
holds  itself  pridefully,  and  that  it  is  not  without  claim 
to  consider  itself  intellectual. 

It  would  immensely  surprise  most  New  Yorkers, 
except  the  tenement  dwellers,  to  know  that,  at  the 
lower  end  of  Second  Avenue,  is  a  big  new  theater 
where  moving  pictures  are  never  given,  and  where 
the  full  desire  is  to  give  only  intellectual  plays.  The 
plays  are  presented  in  German- Yiddish,  and  the  au- 
thors are  themselves  Yiddish,  either  of  this  country 

108 


AMONG  THE  TENEMENTS 


or  of  Europe,  or  else  the  plays  are  translations,  into 
German-Yiddish,  from  such  authors  as  Shakespeare 
and  Sudermann!  The  management  prides  itself  on 
giving  the  highest  average  of  play  in  New  York! — 
but  of  course,  unless  one  is  conversant  with  Yiddish, 
it  is  a  little  difficult  to  form  a  definite  opinion  as  to 
this.  The  theater  holds  two  thousand  people,  the  au- 
diences are  generally  large,  and  the  admission,  al- 
though lower  than  Broadway  standards,  is  double  that 
of  the  best  Broadway  moving  pictures — box  seats  be- 
ing two  dollars  and  orchestra  seats  one  dollar. 

Many  classes  and  conditions  go  to  make  up  the  life 
of  the  great  East  Side.  There  is  poverty  there,  and 
there  is  inconceivable  crowding,  and  there  is  lack  of 
food  and  air  and  there  is  unspeakable  misery  and 
there  is  ignorance.  But  there  is  also  much  of  happi- 
ness and  there  are  great  numbers — perhaps  the  ma- 
jority— who  have  plenty  of  money  for  comforts  and 
gayeties.  Many  of  the  tenement  dwellers  have 
pianos. 

Eents,  when  a  number  crowd  into  a  few  rooms,  do 
not  seem  so  extremely  high ;  often,  and  even  generally, 
it  is  the  case  that  not  only  is  the  father  a  wage- 
earner,  but  that  two  or  three  children  are  also  wage- 
earners,  so  that  the  total  income  of  a  family  may  be 
comfortably  large  even  though  their  tenement  rooms 
are  uncomfortably  small. 

Iron  fire-ladders  gridiron  the  fronts  of  the  build- 
ings, and  in  hot  weather  they  are  gridirons  in  very 
truth,  baked  by  the  sun  to  a  furious  heat. 

Social  life,  the  cheerful  intermingling  with  one  an- 

109 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


other,  makes  a  vital  difference  between  the  tenement 
section  and  all  other  parts  of  New  York.  Social  clubs 
are  a  great  feature:  and  if  I  mention  a  dance  to  be 
given  by  the  Broken  Shutter  Association,  with  such 
sponsors  as  Rock  Hennessey,  Tony  Ferito,  Tips  Bags 
and  Sol  Carsella,  it  is  because  I  noticed  in  a  window 
a  printed  circular,  with  these  names,  only  to-day. 

But  the  streets  themselves — to  make  a  contradic- 
tion express  a  fact — are  the  real  club  houses  of  the 
tenements.  The  tenement  population,  except  when 
the  weather  is  too  wet  or  too  cold,  and  especially  in 
the  early  evening  following  a  hot  day,  are  mostly  am- 
bulatory, moving  about  with  genial  aimlessness  and 
shifting  back  and  forth  on  the  pavements  and  side- 
walk. The  shuffling  of  feet,  the  chirring  hum  of  talk, 
the  laughter  of  children,  make  a  wellnigh  indistin- 
guishable medley.  The  vibrant  clink  of  glasses,  the 
twanging  note  of  a  guitar,  the  grinding  rattle  of  sur- 
face cars,  the  thunder  of  the  Elevated,  the  distant 
clanging  of  a  gong,  the  tolling  of  a  bell,  such  are 
among  the  familiar  sounds;  and  whether  the  bell  is 
for  a  funeral  or  for  a  mass,  and  whether  the  gong  is 
fire  or  police  or  hospital,  is  known,  as  if  instinctively, 
to  all :  for  these  people  come  to  know  the  streets  and 
all  that  pertains  to  the  streets  with  a  loving  intimacy. 

And,  thrown  close  together  as  they  are,  in  their 
crowded  tenements  and  in  the  streets,  the  people  know 
the  life  about  them  in  its  every  phase.  Their  friend- 
liness, one  to  another,  their  mutual  helpfulness,  es- 
pecially the  generosity  of  those  of  slender  purse,  puts 
to  shame  the  calculated  charities  of  the  rich. 

110 


AMONG  THE  TENEMENTS 


And  the  very  crowdedness  of  life  makes  much  for 
mutual  mindfulness.  If  a  courting  couple  wish  to 
monopolize  a  fire-escape  balcony  instead  of  wander- 
ing away  from  home,  neighborhood  courtesy  is  apt  to 
yield  it  to  them.  The  great  public  recreation  piers 
have  become  of  vast  good  in  the  opportunities  made 
cheerfully  possible  for  social  pleasure;  and  the  little 
parks  that  dot  the  city,  numbers  of  them  having  been 
established  within  recent  years,  are  also  important 
social  assets.  When  the  rooms  at  home  are  few  and 
crowded,  young  people  will  generally  go  elsewhere, 
and  it  is  fortunate  that  New  York  has  so  broad-mind- 
edly provided  respectable  public  resorts. 

The  first  tenement  house  of  New  York  was  built  in 
1833,  on  Water  Street,  on  a  spot  which  is  now  within 
the  limits  of  Corlears  Park  (how  few,  of  those  who 
deem  themselves  real  New  Yorkers,  have  any  idea 
where  that  is !) ;  it  was  four  stories  in  height,  and  each 
floor  was  arranged  for  one  family. 

The  East  Side,  largely  so  comfortable  and  prosper- 
ous, does  not  understand  why  the  rest  of  the  city,  and 
the  country  in  general,  feel  and  express  pity  for  it! 
But  it  accepts,  appreciatively,  the  vast  benefits  freely 
offered  it  by  settlements''  and  associations;  and  if 
great  part  of  the  benefits  go  without  cost  to  people 
who  could  well  afford  to  pay,  the  efforts  are  none  the 
less  well  meant,  and  often  do  real  good,  and  are  an 
admirable  outlet  for  money  that  otherwise  would 
probably  be  put  to  not  nearly  such  laudable  purpose. 
On  the  whole,  the  East  Side,  in  spite  of  such  poverty 
and  misery  and  crime  as  may  really  be  there  (and 

111 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


it  may  be  remarked  that  too  little  money,  too  much 
unhappiness,  and  incidental  illegal  acts,  are  not  char- 
acteristic of  this  portion  of  the  city  alone!)  repre- 
sents the  happiest  portion  of  New  York. 

Yet  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  the  tenement  re- 
gion is  in  every  aspect  picturesque,  for  much  of  it 
looks  very  humdrum  indeed.  But  much  of  it  is  full  of 
interest.  There  are  great  districts  of  the  city  where 
it  is  almost  hopeless  to  find  an  English-speaking  per- 
son to  answer  an  ordinary  question,  either  on  the 
streets  or  at  the  doors  of  the  little  shops.  In  these  sec- 
tions it  is  equally  difficult  to  find  a  newspaper  printed 
in  English,  though  you  may  find  on  various  stands 
newspapers  printed  in  as  many  as  twelve  different 
languages  or  dialects. 

Perhaps  no  feature  of  tenement  district  life  is  so 
picturesque  as  that  of  the  street  markets,  some  of 
them  busy  daylight  markets  and  some  being  markets 
at  night. 

There  is  a  fish  market  two  evenings  a  week  under 
the  first  arches  of  Williamsburg  Bridge:  the  stalls, 
roofed  by  the  bridge  itself,  and  lighted  by  flambeaux, 
might  be  a  market  in  an  archway  of  ancient  Florence. 
There  are  street  markets,  with  long  lines  of  push- 
carts lined  along  the  curb,  just  outside  of  the  side- 
walk, on  Bleecker  Street  and  just  off  Tompkins 
Square,  and  in  many  other  places,  and  they  are  not 
only  for  fruits  and  vegetables  but  for  cloth  and  hos- 
iery and  kitchenware  and  a  host  of  things. 

The  market  on  Mulberry  Street  is  of  typical  inter- 
est.   Here  the  people  are  mostly  Italians.   In  the 

112 


AMONG  THE  TENEMENTS 


windows  of  the  dirty  little  stores  that  line  the  street 
are  such  signs  as  *  *  Eistorante.  Prezzi  5  c.  10  c, ' '  and 
Trattoria  Loganda/'  and  ^^Banca  Italiana,''  and 
**Grosseria  Italiani/'  and  Lager  Beer" — this  last 
being  clearly  untranslatable ! 

The  gutters  are  lined  with  push-carts  standing  end 
to  end.  The  sidewalks  beside  them  are  lined  with 
booths  and  boxes  and  tubs  and  stands.  There  are 
apples  and  chestnuts  and  olives.  Some  of  the  women 
sit  on  the  curb,  and  the  basket  of  one,  beside  her,  is 
partitioned  into  two  halves,  one  part  filled  with  or- 
anges and  the  other — delightful  incongruity! — with 
onions. 

There  are  baskets  and  boxes  and  booths  filled  with 
nothing  but  bread,  as  if  to  indicate  defiance  of  the 
saying  that  man  cannot  live  by  bread  alone ;  and  some 
of  the  bread  is  white,  but  much  is  dark  and  sodden, 
and  you  notice  that  any  prospective  customer  feels  at 
full  liberty  to  pick  up  the  loaves,  press  and  feel  them 
with  more  or  less  clean  fingers,  and  lay  them 
down  again.  There  are  quantities  of  peanuts,  there 
are  sweet  potatoes,  there  are  many  strings  of  brilliant 
red  peppers,  there  is  booth  after  booth  filled  with 
onions,  there  are  tomatoes.  There  are  great  bars  of 
yellow  soap  of  a  size  and  length  such  as  no  one  ever 
sees  elsewhere.  There  are  many  stands  for  selling 
fish ;  perch,  smelt,  codfish  and  other  varieties.  There 
are  numberless  eels,  some  of  them  of  monster  size 
and  others  diminutive. 

The  ceaseless  chaffering  and  dickering,  and  the  talk 
and  laughter  of  the  people  who  crowd  each  other  on 

113 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


the  thronged  sidewalks,  and  the  cries  of  rival  dealers 
calling  attention  to  their  wares,  and  the  shouts  of  the 
children  who  are  playing  and  dodging  about,  fill  the 
air  with  discordant  interest. 

The  massed  population,  all  about,  is  astounding, 
for  it  is  not  only  that  the  buildings  that  line  the  street 
are  filled  to  overflowing  with  poor  humanity,  but  that 
behind  these  buildings  are  others,  out  of  sight  from 
the  street,  and  reached  only  by  narrow  tunnel-like 
passages.  New  York  is  doing  away  with  rear  tene- 
ments, but  numbers  still  remain. 

Many  booths  and  stands  are  for  the  sale  of  all 
sorts  of  odds  and  ends,  including  cheap  jewelry,  and 
gaudy  handkerchiefs,  and  woolen  caps;  and  fish  so 
thoroughly  and  completely  dried  that  they  are  noth- 
ing but  grisly  skeletons. 

It  amused  me  one  day  to  see  a  Chinaman  and  Ital- 
ian holding  a  colloquy  together.  The  Chinaman  had 
thoughts  of  purchasing  a  string  of  some  mysterious 
eatable,  and  the  Italian  was  expatiating  on  its  merits 
and  its  cheapness  with  a  rapid  flow  of  words.  The 
Chinaman  could  not  understand  a  word  he  was  say- 
ing, but  that  did  not  check  the  eloquence  in  the  least. 
The  Italian  gesticulated,  he  exclaimed,  he  made  dra- 
matic pauses,  he  fluently  began  over  again;  hands, 
features  and  voice  were  all  made  to  take  part  in  his 
effort  to  make  a  sale,  and  throughout  it  all  the  China- 
man silently  looked  at  him,  and  after  some  five  min- 
utes of  Italian  eloquence  he  paid  the  price  and  took 
away  the  string. 

Most  interesting  of  the  night  street  markets  is  that 

114 


AMONG  THE  TENEMENTS 

of  Grand  Street.  Grand  Street  is  the  Broadway  of 
the  East  Side.  It  stretches  off  interminably  in  that 
part  of  it  between  the  Bowery  and  the  East  River; 
that  region  being  in  the  broadest  part  of  Manhattan 
Island.  It  has  long  lines  of  shop  fronts  on  both  sides 
of  the  street,  and  on  Saturday  evenings,  when  the 
shops  themselves  are  all  brilliantly  alight,  the  street 
market  establishes  itself  along  the  curb  in  long  lines. 
The  movable  booths  and  the  standing  push-carts  are 
stacked  high.  In  all,  it  is  a  vivid  and  picturesque 
sight.  For  on  Saturday  evening  the  Grand  Street 
sidewalks  are  thick-jammed  with  thronging  people, 
largely  foreigners,  dressed  with  the  vivid  colorings 
that  foreigners  love.  The  shops,  the  street  booths, 
the  people,  the  chirring  happiness,  the  lights  and 
colors,  the  eager  rush  of  pleasure  and  of  spending — 
it  is  a  sight  to  be  seen  and  to  be  remembered. 

Division  Street,  where  the  Second  Avenue  Elevated 
leads  away  from  Chatham  Square,  is  one  of  the  dark- 
est and  blackest  of  streets,  for  it  is  a  narrow  street, 
and  is  quite  filled  by  the  track  structure  that  extends 
from  side  to  side  and  blocks  out  all  the  sunlight.  But 
this  street  has  been  picked  out,  in  extraordinary  fash- 
ion, for  the  hat  and  cloak  and  gown  street  of  the 
East  Side !  From  Chatham  Square  to  the  Williams- 
burg Bridge  the  stores  show  nothing  but  hats  and 
cloaks  and  gowns.  In  the  w^indows  are  hundreds  of 
wax  figures,  furnished  forth  with  the  most  recent 
styles.  For  these  shops  are  not  makeshift  shops, 
they  are  not  second-hand  shops,  but  are  retail  houses 
that  handle,  for  the  East  Side,  the  fashionable  garb 

115 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


of  the  moment,  but  at  unfashionable  prices!  And, 
after  dark,  in  the  early  evening  hours,  every  shop  is 
brilliantly  lighted,  and  the  daylight  blight  of  the  Ele- 
vated is  forgotten.  East  Side  business  must  needs 
give  opportunity  to  its  people  to  buy  at  night,  for  so 
many  of  them  work  throughout  the  day. 

Allen  Street  is  another  of  the  exceedingly  narrow 
streets  of  the  East  Side,  and  it  is  also  black  and  dis- 
mal through  being  completely  shaded  by  the  Elevated 
tracks  that  occupy  its  width.  The  street  has,  for 
years,  been  the  center  of  the  Russian  brass  trade,  with 
fascinating  little  shops  glittering  and  gleaming  with 
thousands  of  candlesticks  and  bowls  and  boxes  and 
sconces  and  kettles  made  of  brass.  And  recently, 
that  portion  of  the  street  near  Canal  Street  has  been 
the  object  of  the  strangest  of  migrations.  For  one 
little  shop  after  another  has  established  itself  here,  on 
this  street  of  narrow  blackness,  for  the  handling  of 
delicate  silk  underwear,  fluffy  with  soft  lace !  There 
is  no  apparent  reason  for  this :  it  seems  but  a  freakish 
and  needless  choice. 

An  interesting  portion  of  the  East  Side  is  along 
the  waterfront  of  the  lower  East  River,  where,  al- 
though much  of  the  seafaring  life  of  old  clipper  days 
has  gone,  there  are  still  doddering  old  taverns  and 
lodging  houses  that  shelter  amphibious  folk,  and 
there  are  bowsprits  still  projecting  far  over  the  land, 
and  there  are  strange  sea  smells  of  spices  and  for- 
eign things,  and  there  are  Lascars  and  such  strange 
sailor  folk  leaning  over  the  ships'  rails. 

On  the  East  Side  there  is  a  ceaseless  shift  and 

116 


AMONG  THE  TENEMENTS 


change  of  nationalities  and  religions.  Churches 
change  to  synagogues  and  synagogues  to  churches. 
The  Irish  give  place  to  the  Hebrews,  the  Hebrews  to 
Italians,  the  Italians  perhaps  to  Slavs.  But  the  sea- 
faring Greeks  and  their  long  waterpipes  have  tena- 
ciously held  to  a  little  district  not  far  from  Brooklyn 
Bridge,  and  the  flower-dealing  Greeks  to  a  district 
near  Union  Square : — and  yet,  in  writing  of  New  York, 
one  cannot  with  impunity  say  that  anything  is  a  con- 
tinuing fact :  even  as  I  write  this,  the  Greeks  may  be 
migrating  to  some  other  locality.  Most  permanent 
of  all  have  been  the  Syrians  and  Chinese;  the  Syr- 
ians most  marvelously  so,  for  decades  ago  they  chose 
tumble-down  tenements  near  the  North  Eivejr,  at  the 
extreme  southern  end  of  Manhattan:  a  locality  that 
no  one  could  have  thought  of  as  anything  but  tem- 
porary, for  the  most  ordinary  development  would  be 
expected  to  put  up  great  business  structures  there. 
Yet  the  tumble-down  buildings  still  unbelievably  re- 
main, and  the  Syrians  still  inhabit  them. 

Strictly  speaking,  there  are  many  tenements  in  New 
York  that  rent  for  many  thousands  of  dollars  a  year : 
for  in  the  purview  of  the  law  an  apartment  house, 
no  matter  how  expensive,  is  a  tenement  house.  But 
in  ordinary  adaptation,  nothing  that  is  expensive  is 
a  tenement.  Perhaps  the  most  vital  touchstone,  of 
difference,  is  the  front  door,  which  in  an  apartment 
house  is  never  left  open  but  which,  in  a  tenement 
house,  is  almost  always  left  open. 

In  many,  and  perhaps  most,  of  the  tenement  houses 
— using  the  term  again,  in  its  accepted  sense — there  is 

117 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


only  the  kitchen  fire.  The  heat  of  the  enclosed  house, 
built  tightly  between  other  houses,  the  smallness 
of  the  rooms,  the  number  of  people  in  them,  all  make 
it  possible  to  live  quite  comfortably  with  the  heat  of 
but  a  single  stove.  Many  of  the  moderate-priced 
apartment  houses  have  also  but  one  fire,  the  kitchen 
fire,  with  no  heat  supplied  in  any  other  way;  and 
some  have  heated  hallways  only.  I  have  heard  it  es- 
timated that  half  the  population  of  Manhattan  has  but 
the  kitchen  fire,  but  this  estimate  seems  too  high. 

A  subtle  change  has  within  a  few  years  past  come 
over  the  mighty  tenement  district.  A  great  part  of 
its  strength,  its  idiosyncrasies,  its  uniqueness,  its 
characteristics,  has  come  through  its  being  unbrok- 
enly  massed,  in  solid  block  after  block  of  great  houses. 
This  unbroken  massing  gave  it  an  aspect  of  being  a 
city  apart,  a  region  by  itself,  a  segregated  section, 
and  gave  its  people  the  feeling  of  being  a  people 
apart.  All  this  is  still,  in  the  main,  unchanged;  and 
yet,  the  sense  of  being  unbrokenly  massed  has  been 
to  some  degree  affected  by  the  enormous  tearing  away 
of  buildings  for  bridges  and  bridge  approaches,  for 
new  parks,  for  public  schools,  new  charitable  institu- 
tions. There  has  been  somewhat  the  effect  as  of  dis- 
turbing and  tearing  apart  an  enormous  ant  hill,  and 
thus  setting  its  inhabitants  into  agitation. 

In  the  year  in  which  ground  was  cleared  for  the 
Pennsylvania  Eailway  Station,  a  clearing  which  lev- 
eled block  after  block  of  tenements,  a  clearing  was 
also  made  for  one  of  the  great  bridges,  and  these  two 
causes  made  together  a  tremendous  increase  in  the 

118 


AMONG  THE  TENEMENTS 

number  of  eviction  notices;  for  unless  notices  were 
formally  given,  any  tenant  might  at  the  last  moment 
refuse  to  move,  and  thereby  hamper  a  great  improve- 
ment. The  number  of  these  evictions  was  not  in  the 
slightest  sense  a  matter  of  hardship  between  landlord 
and  tenant,  but  they  gave  a  man  an  opportunity  to 
rise  to  prominence  as  an  authority  on  New  York  life, 
for  he  wrote  a  book  telling  of  the  oppression  of  the 
people  of  the  tenements,  and  expatiating  on  the 
cruelty  of  tenement  house  owners,  and  he  proved  his 
point  by  giving  the  positively  startling  total  of  evic- 
tion notices  for  the  year  which  had  just  ended.  It 
is  not  at  all  improbable  that  he  was  himself  unaware 
of  the  reason  behind  the  notices,  and  that  in  conse- 
quence he  wrote  with  all  the  fire  of  mistaken  convic- 
tion. 

Tompkins  Square  is  an  unusually  large  square  east 
of  Second  Avenue,  surrounded  by  a  region  of  tene- 
ments; the  square  itself  being  now  used  mainly  for 
public  playgrounds  for  the  thousands  of  children  who 
come  here,  especially  on  Saturdays. 

But  perhaps  it  is  most  interesting  on  account  of 
the  memories  evoked  by  a  stone  fountain,  designed 
with  simple  dignity,  which  stands  over  in  the  south- 
west comer.  On  the  face  of  the  fountain  are  two 
attractive  little  children,  a  boy  and  a  girl;  the  boy 
standing  protectingly  over  the  girl  and  the  girl  nes- 
tling at  his  feet.  The  fountain  was  erected  in  mem- 
ory of  those  who  lost  their  lives  through  the  burn- 
ing of  the  steamer  Slocum,  in  the  East  River,  in  1904. 
Hundreds  of  women  and  children  were  needlessly 

119 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


drowned  or  burned  to  death  on  that  terrible  day,  and 
most  of  the  families  lived  in  the  immediate  neighbor- 
hood of  this  square.  I  remember  one  of  the  bereaved 
parents,  a  grievously  saddened  man,  saying  that  he 
did  not  understand  why,  if  God  should  take  such 
trouble  to  save  the  Hebrews  in  the  Red  Sea,  he  did 
not  save  New  Yorkers  in  the  East  River. 

The  lower  East  Side  was  the  part  of  the  city  where, 
in  early  days,  the  greater  part  of  the  rich  and  pros- 
perous dwelt.  Most  of  the  early  shipping  docked 
along  the  East  River.  It  was  on  the  East  Side  that 
warehouses  and  stores  first  arose.  Throughout  that 
region  long  rows  of  fine  mansions  were  built.  Mean- 
while, the  West  Side  was  slow  in  developing,  largely 
because  to  quite  an  extent  it  was  swampy  land,  or 
cut  by  channels  of  sluggish  water.  Until  well  into  the 
nineteenth  century  the  East  Side  retained  its  social 
and  business  leadership. 

The  city  gave  solemn  commemorative  exercises  on 
the  death  of  President  Harrison,  **01d  Tippecanoe," 
in  1841.  Business  was  totally  suspended  for  the  day, 
the  city  was  draped  in  black,  and  there  was  a  proces- 
sion of  some  thirty  thousand  men,  although  it  was 
a  day  of  storm:  and,  to  cover  the  very  best  part  of 
the  city,  the  paraders  went  from  City  Hall  Park,  by 
way  of  East  Broadway  and  Grand  Street  and  the 
Bowery,  to  Union  Square,  returning  thence  along 
Broadway :  thus  ignoring  the  West  Side,  and  march- 
ing first  through  streets  that  are  now  in  the  very 
heart  of  the  tenement  district. 

Many  a  tremulous  and  superannuated  old  building 

120 


AMONG  THE  TENEMENTS 


still  stands  on  the  tenement  streets,  many  and  many  a 
detail  of  interest  has  been  preserved,  many  and  many 
a  charming  old  fanlight  or  fireplace  or  pillared  door- 
way ;  and  at  any  time  a  house  with  such  treasure  may 
be  torn  down  and  if  you  are  on  hand  at  the  time  you 
may  be  able  to  carry  some  of  the  treasure  away. 
Only  yesterday  I  passed  an  old-time  building  near 
Washington  Square  that  was  in  the  last  stages  of 
demolition ;  a  quick  look  about  the  fast  disappearing 
ruins  showed  that  only  one  thing  remained,  but  that 
was  a  carved  newel  post  of  solid  mahogany;  and,  so 
it  happened,  it  was  something  that  I  especially  hap- 
pened to  need ! 

Stanford  White,  the  great  New  York  architect,  used 
to  come  home  from  Europe  with  treasure  torn  out  of 
old-time  buildings,  which  he  put  into  buildings  in  New 
York;  but  he  also  knew  the  value  of  old  New  York 
remains;  and  I  remember,  in  particular,  a  beautiful 
mantelpiece  which  he  secured  at  the  tearing  down  of 
DePauw  Eow,  on  Bleecker  Street,  and  built  into  a 
hotel  which  he  was  at  that  time  erecting.  De  Pauw 
Eow,  itself,  had  long  been  a  romantic  relic  of  the  past, 
with  its  traditions  of  wealthy  living,  and  its  arched 
entrances  to  the  curving  drive  within  its  inner  court 
— which,  by  the  way,  made  the  place,  after  the  depart- 
ure of  wealth  and  fashion,  a  veritable  thieves'  para- 
dise from  the  various  exits  and  entrances  which  fa- 
cilitated the  dodging  of  the  police. 

The  most  notable  old  spiral  staircase  in  New  York, 
a  marvel  of  construction,  was  in  the  old  Cafe  Boule- 
vard on  Second  Avenue :  and  I  read  in  a  newspaper, 

121 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW.  YORK 


which  told  of  the  destruction  of  the  building,  that  the 
wonderful  stair  was  torn  to  pieces  and  thrown  away ! 
What  an  opportunity  missed  by  the  many  who  could 
have  used  it  to  splendid  advantage.  The  most  beau- 
tiful doorway  in  Deerfield,  that  Massachusetts  village 
of  ancient  houses  of  sweetness  and  charm,  was  not 
made  for  the  house  in  which  it  stands,  was  not  made 
in  Deerfield  or  even  in  New  England,  but  was  secured 
by  an  artist  on  the  tearing  down  of  an  old  house  in  the 
Greenwich  Village  section  of  New  York  City  I 

Always  and  constantly,  in  New  York,  one  notices 
changes.  Going  about,  a  few  years  ago,  with  an  old 
gentleman  of  eighty,  a  visitor  from  the  West,  who  had 
come  back  to  New  York  to  see  the  localities  familiar 
when  he  was  a  man  of  middle-age,  he  was  deeply  in- 
terested in  the  retail  business,  which  had  advanced 
to  the  vicinity  of  23rd  Street,  and  he  was  amazed  that 
it  had  gone  so  far  north.  How  much  more  amazed 
would  he  now  be,  to  find  the  center  at  42nd  Street, 
with  no  one  able  to  say  where  it  will  be  to-morrow! 
Then  he  insistently  wanted  to  go  down-town.  Grand 
Street  was  the  best  shopping  street  of  the  city  in  his 
earlier  years,  he  remembered,  and  so  to  Grand  Street 
we  went,  where  there  had  been  the  best  retail  stores, 
not  merely  for  the  East  Side  but  for  both  sides  of 
the  city.  But  what  changes  he  found!  It  was  still 
a  wonderfully  busy  street,  but  everything  that  he  had 
known  was  gone. 

When  I  think  of  the  picturesque  things  that  I  have 
seen  among  the  tenements,  always  there  comes  the 
memory  of  the  study-room  of  some  rabbis,  in  a  tum- 

122 


AMONG  THE  TENEMENTS 


ble-down  old  structure  on  Orchard  Street ;  a  building 
of  frame,  standing  tremulously  as  with  the  stoop  of 
an  old  man. 

Perhaps  the  building  has  gone  by  now.  I  have  not 
seen  it  for  a  year — and  in  New  York  all  buildings, 
whether  old  or  new,  exist  in  the  constant  shadow  of 
the  terrible  epitaph,  ^^Torn  Down'';  but  it  is,  if  the 
usual  New  York  fate  has  not  befallen  it,  an  interest- 
ing place,  with  this  low-ceilinged  room  reached  by  two 
flights  of  stumbling  stairs.  Around  the  room  were 
cases  filled  with  books  and  manuscripts.  There  were 
a  few  small  tables  and  some  chairs.  The  room  was 
lighted  by  lamps  that  seemed  to  burn  but  dimly,  and 
the  old  men,  poring  over  the  Talmud  and  the  parch- 
ments of  rabbinical  lore,  had  thick  dark  hair  under 
close-fitting  skull-caps,  and  beards  of  great  length, 
and  softly  glowing  eyes,  and  fingers  tenuous  and  al- 
most clawlike  from  the  constant  handling  of  crumbly 
pages.  It  was  a  place  of  silence  and  dignity,  a  pic- 
torial place,  with  patriarchal  faces  half  in  shadow  and 
half  in  light,  and  lambent  lusters  on  sheets  of  golden 
yellow.  It  made  a  scene  that  would  be  remarkable 
even  in  the  Ghetto  of  Amsterdam  or  Frankfort-on- 
the-Main. 


123 


CHAPTER  X 


TAMMANY 


HEN  the  American  army  was 
awaiting  formal  disband- 
ment,  at  the  close  of  the 
Eevolutionary  War,  and  was 
lying  in  cantonments  on  the 
Hudson,  ready  to  march  in 
and  take  possession  of  New 
York  and  considered,  so  to 
speak,  the  entire  Revolu- 
tionary incident  closed,  it 
came  to  the  officers  that  it 
would  be  a  fine  thing  to  per- 
petuate their  friendship  in 


the  bonds  of  an  association. 
The  idea,  once  thought  of,  was  so  attractive  that  offi- 
cer after  officer  declared  himself  enthusiastically  for 
it,  and  an  organization  was  effected. 

Washington  was  the  first  officer  to  sign  the  paper 
which  represented  the  objects  of  the  new  society  and 
outlined  its  plan.  He  signed  in  his  oddly  usual  way, 
not  with  the  George,"  as  would  naturally,  at  least 
nowadays,  be  expected,  and  not  simply  with  the  in- 
itial ^^G.,"  but  with  the  abbreviation  '*Go.,''  the  tiny 
**o''  being  scarcely  noticeable  above  the  line,  and 

124 


TAMMANY 

with  a  pronounced  flourish  in  the  crossing  of  the  *^t." 

Those  first  signers  of  the  constitution  of  the  So- 
ciety of  Cincinnati  make  an  interesting  list.  There 
is  an  unobtrusive  ^'Nath.  Green,  Maj.Gen.'';  then 
comes,  with  the  flourish  as  of  a  schoolboy,  a  shakily 
written  **Eufus  Putnam,  B.Genl.";  there  are  lesser 
known  generals,  such  as  Greaton  and  Layton  and 
Huntington;  there  is  '^B.Lincoln,M.G.'';  there  are 
colonels  and  surgeons  and  quartermasters  mingling 
with  the  generals;  there  is  the  odd  signature  of  the 
mighty  Major-General  Knox,  H.Knox,"  with  the 
**H''  and  *^K'^  making  together  a  simple  monogram; 
there  is  Baron  Steuben,  signing  in  his  foreign  way, 
without  given  name,  and  following  with  a  fancifully 
scrolled  *^M.  G." 

The  society  was  given  its  name  of  the  Cincinnati 
because,  **The  officers  of  the  American  Army,  hav- 
ing generally  been  taken  from  the  Citizens  of  Amer- 
ica, possess  high  veneration  for  the  character  of  that 
illustrious  Roman,  Lucius  Quintius  Cincinnatus,  and 
are  resolved  to  follow  his  example  by  returning  to 
their  citizenship.''  The  organization  was  not  only 
to  perpetuate  friendships,  but  also  to  extend  the 
most  substantial  acts  of  beneficence  towards  those 
officers  and  their  families  who  may  be  under  the  ne- 
cessity of  receiving  it";  and  the  society  was  to  con- 
tinue forever,  through  taking  in  descendants  of  the 
original  members. 

All  this  arranged,  and  the  planning  of  it  having 
served  to  break  the  ennui  of  waiting  for  the  British 
to  complete  their  preparations  and  sail  away,  the 

125 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


Americans  gaily  marched  down  into  New  York ;  Gen- 
eral Washington  himself,  first  president  of  the  Cin- 
cinnati, spending  the  night  before  actually  entering 
the  city  at  the  Van  Cortlandt  mansion,  still  standing 
in  Van  Cortlandt  Park,  where  he  dressed  himself, 
as  is  recorded,  with  particular  care  for  the  solemn 
occasion  of  taking  possession  of  the  place  that  the 
British  had  held  for  years.  It  would  almost  seem 
that  no  man  in  history  has  had  quite  so  much  re- 
corded about  his  clothes  as  George  Washington ;  and 
this  was  not  because  he  was  in  the  least  a  Beau 
Brummel,  but  that  he  deemed  the  matter  of  excel- 
lent clothes  a  matter  excellently  worth  while  seeing 
to,  and  that  in  this,  as  in  everything,  he  impressed 
his  personality  on  all  who  wrote  about  him. 

And  so  the  officers  of  the  army  had  become  the 
Cincinnati — and  without  the  slightest  suspicion  that 
they  had  done  something  that  was  to  raise  a  mighty 
storm!  For  the  people  in  general  did  not  like  the 
idea  of  the  well-meant  Cincinnati  with  their  elaborate 
jeweled  insignia.  To  the  mass  of  the  people  it  sa- 
vored altogether  too  much  of  aristocratic  exclusive- 
ness ;  they  feared  that  the  officers  were  to  perpetuate 
themselves  as  a  powerful  body,  set  apart  in  interests 
that  would  not  be  those  of  the  nation.  Such  a  storm 
of  opposition  arose  as  threatened  the  very  existence 
of  the  Cincinnati,  and  made  it  everywhere  unpopu- 
lar; but  no  result  of  the  general  opposition  was  so 
important  as  the  formation  of  Tammany. 

For  Tammany  was  organized  six  years  after  the 
organization  of  the  Cincinnati,  in  the  year  in  which 

126 


TAMMANY 


Washington  became  President  of  the  United  States, 
and  as  a  protest  against  the  Cincinnati.  As  the  first 
organization  was  held  to  represent  an  aristocracy  of 
rank,  the  second  was  understood  to  stand  for  the  in- 
terests of  what  are  termed  the  common  people. 

It  is  odd  that  the  mighty  New  York  organization 
of  Tammany,  which  almost  at  once  rose  to  promi- 
nence and  power,  should  have  taken  as  its  name  that 
of  a  Philadelphia  Indian!  For  Tammany  was  a 
prominent  Indian  chief,  commonly  referred  to  as 
Tamenund,  whose  headquarters  were  in  the  vicinity 
of  what  is  now  Doylestown,  a  suburb  to  the  north- 
ward of  Philadelphia ;  and  that  is  why  the  Tammany 
men  still  call  themselves  **Braves,''  and  why  their 
headquarters  is  the  *^ Wigwam.'^ 

As  a  political  organization,  Tammany  became 
probably  the  strongest  and  best  organized  that  the 
world  has  ever  known.  That  it  became  not  only  a 
power,  but  at  the  same  time  a  power  for  evil  and  for 
what  is  known  as  graft, is  well  known;  but  there 
have  been  many  phases  that  are  not  well  known,  for 
Tammany  is  by  no  means  all  evil. 

A  central  head  dictates  the  affairs  and  policy  of 
Tammany.  It  is  thus  an  autocracy.  But  under  this 
central  head,  supporting  the  leader  and  in  turn  by 
him  supported,  is  a  wonderful  body  of  leaders,  each 
man  the  choice  of  his  district.  And  Tammany  is 
thus  a  democracy.  The  district  leaders,  in  turn,  wield 
their  power  and  gain  their  information  through  an 
organization  of  local  captains. 

That  many  a  Tammany  man  is  a  man  entirely  un- 

127 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


scrupulous  is  quite  true :  selfishness,  the  acceptance  of 
bribes,  the  levying  of  contributions — these  things,  on 
the  part  of  some,  are  not  to  be  denied.  But  Tamm-.ny 
can  fairly  point  out,  on  the  other  hand,  that  Reform'* 
is  often,  if  not  usually,  but  a  screen  behind  which  are 
hiding  men  quite  as  unscrupulous  as  any  of  Tammany. 
Politics  develops  both  the  good  and  the  bad  of  man- 
kind. I  have  not  the  slightest  thought  of  either  de- 
fending or  attacking  Tammany;  it  is  only  that  the 
organization  represents  a  vital  phase  of  New  York 
life,  and  therefore  ought  to  be  understood.  And  it  is 
well  that  there  have  been  alternations  in  city  control, 
between  Tammany  and  Reform,''  for  in  that  way 
there  has  always  been  a  check  upon  both  sides.  And 
Tammany,  and  many  a  Tammany  man,  has  done 
much  for  the  city;  much  of  excellence  and  fineness  and 
much  of  permanent  value. 

The  district  leader  is  a  picturesque  figure,  repre- 
senting a  picturesque  condition.  For  a  district  leader, 
to  be  successful,  must  be  a  man  of  ability  and  deter- 
mination, the  possessor  of  tact  and  resourcefulness. 
He  is  mediaeval!  He  is  the  head  of  a  clan,  his  clan 
being  every  member  of  his  party,  every  actual  and 
potential  follower,  within  the  bounds  of  his  district. 
He  must  know,  personally  as  far  as  possible,  and  with 
absolute  completeness  through  his  captains  and  their 
assistants,  the  main  facts  in  regard  to  everybody  and 
everything  in  his  territory.    And  he  does ! 

He  watches  over  his  followers  with  a  fatherly  and 
watchful  eye.  He  is  ready  to  help  them  in  a  hun- 
dred ways.    He  sees  to  the  getting  of  jobs ;  generally 

128 


TAMMANY 


city  jobs,  but  not  infrequently  jobs  that  are  not  politi- 
cal.   And  he  sees  that  his  clansmen  vote  right/' 

The  district  leader  has  the  power  and  the  responsi- 
bilities of  a  tribal  chief,  and  he  expects  obedience. 
And  when  there  is  some  upheaval  imminent  he  must, 
even  if  he  cannot  prevent  it,  at  least  know  all  about  it 
before  it  actually  comes. 

The  late  Battery  Dan,"  one  of  the  strongest  of  all 
district  leaders,  expected,  in  advance  of  any  election, 
to  be  able  to  forecast,  with  absolute  precision,  how 
from  93  to  95  out  of  every  100  of  the  men  of  his 
district,  of  both  parties,  were  going  to  vote.  And  if 
ever  his  prognostication  was  wrong  he  felt  deeply 
mortified. 

The  motto  of  another  leader,  who  made  a  point  of 
being  generous  in  regard  to  giving  pleasant  times  to 
the  children,  was,  frankly,  that  *  ^  There 's  votes  in  the 
crying  of  a  baby  made  sick  by  a  stomachf ul  of  free  ice 
cream ! ' ' 

That  the  Tammany  district  leaders  are  always  ready 
to  be  called  upon  for  aid  or  advice  has  been  an  im- 
mense bulwark  of  their  strength.  One  of  them,  run- 
ning for  alderman,  against  an  extremely  wealthy  and 
public-spirited  candidate  put  up  by  the  opposition, 
based  his  campaign — and  it  was  a  difficult  campaign, 
as  the  normal  opposition  outnumbered  him — upon  the 
declaration,  repeated  at  meeting  after  meeting : 

**You  know  me.  Elect  me  and  I'll  be  an  alderman 
of  the  people,  ready  to  help  at  any  hour  of  the  day 
or  night.  But  elect  a  millionaire — and  you'll  be  ar- 
rested if  you  ring  his  doorbell  after  dark!"   And  of 

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THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


course  he  was  elected.  The  leader  of  a  neighboring 
district  made  himself  a  candidate  for  the  State  Legis- 
lature. **I^11  be  better  for  you  than  a  Daniel  Web- 
ster ! '  *  was  his  slogan — and  he  won. 

The  district  leader  does  not,  as  a  rule,  and  unless 
for  some  special  reason  or  the  satisfying  of  some  par- 
ticular personal  ambition,  take  office :  his  power  is  ex- 
erted in  selecting  other  men  for  office  and  in  seeing 
that  they  are  elected — if  he  can.  For  the  important 
offices,  beyond  the  local  jurisdiction  of  the  individual 
leader,  the  general  council  of  leaders  decides :  or,  as 
a  matter  of  fact,  the  one  man  who  is  leader  of  Tam- 
many Hall  and  upon  whose  personal  judgment  the 
final  decision  must  usually  rest.  Tammany  displays, 
constantly,  the  successful  practical  combination  of 
autocratic  and  democratic  methods. 

Tammany  has  added  so  much  of  the  interesting  to 
New  York  life  that,  from  the  standpoint  of  pictur- 
esqueness,  it  is  a  pity  that  its  power  seems  to  be  on 
the  wane  and  its  idiosyncrasies  to  be  passing. 

The  Sullivans,  until  death  took  them,  one  by  one, 
held  immense  power  as  district  leaders  throughout 
recent  years,  and  **Big  Tim,''  the  leader  of  the  Sul- 
livan leaders,  was  a  man  of  unusual  personality.  His 
annual  picnic  to  College  Point  used  to  be  one  of  the 
great  features  of  the  East  Side.  At  least  six  thou- 
sand men  would  go,  by  specially  chartered  steamboats, 
and  the  day  would  be  spent  in  games  and  play;  for 
the  day,  the  thousands  of  men  were  boys  again.  And 
that  each  member  of  the  Sullivan  organization  had  to 
pay  five  dollars  for  the  day 's  pleasure,  which  included 

130 


TAMMANY 


a  grand  dinner — the  cooking  for  six  thousand  men 
being  in  itself  an  achievement  of  magnitude ! — was  no 
deterrent.  It  was  a  favor  to  be  permitted  to  pay  the 
five  dollars.  And  all  the  shop-keepers  and  contract- 
ors and  other  people,  who  hoped  for  favors,  were  glad 
to  buy  tickets  even  if  they  knew  they  could  not  use 
them.  And  the  list  of  complimentary  invitations  was 
always  small. 

The  occasion  was  not  made  the  excuse  for  an  orgy ; 
it  was  always  a  well-ordered  affair;  only  a  few  men 
would  get  drunk,  and  they  were  unostentatiously 
cared  for  in  one  way  or  another.  The  committee  on 
fights"  was  a  delightful  feature,  it  being  composed  of 
a  number  of  the  huskiest  fighters,  one  or  another  of 
whom,  when  a  man  began  to  be  disagreeable  or  to  act 
as  if  he  wanted  a  quarrel,  would  patiently  try  to  curb 
his  belligerence  by  pacific  words,  and  then,  if  the  dis- 
turber still  wanted  a  fight — would  obligingly  and  very 
swiftly  give  it  to  him !  It  was  a  remarkably  success- 
ful committee. 

The  home-coming  was  always  in  the  early  darkness, 
and  there  was  a  parade  to  the  club  headquarters  on 
the  Bowery,  and  the  people  knew  over  which  streets 
the  men  were  to  march,  and  crowds  packed  those 
streets,  massing  on  the  sidewalks  and  on  the  steps 
and  at  the  windows.  Every  man  and  woman  and 
child  was  out,  either  marching  or  welcoming !  And  as 
the  procession,  headed  by  '*Big  Tim,''  in  an  automo- 
bile, went  on,  with  the  music  of  many  bands,  innumer- 
able roman-candles,  sent  up  from  both  sides  of  the 
streets,  formed  a  brilliant  arch  of  continuous  fire,  and 

131 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


everybody  was  wildly  happy,  and  when  the  procession 
turned  into  the  Bowery,  up  near  Cooper  Union,  and 
headed  southward,  and  every  band  blew  full  strength 
on  the  spirited  marching  tunes  of  ^  ^  Tammany, ' '  or 
*^The  Bowery,''  and  big  bonfires  blazed  and  vastly 
more  roman-candles  than  on  the  other  streets  filled  the 
air  with  colored  fire,  it  made  a  strange  and  vividly 
inspiring  sight.  It  was  a  great  clan  displaying  pas- 
sionate devotion  to  its  mediaeval  head. 

Unless  one  knows  something  of  the  reciprocal  per- 
sonal service  and  personal  loyalty  of  leader  and  fol- 
lowers, the  power  of  Tammany  cannot  be  understood. 
A  district  leader  who  even  yet  wields  enormous  per- 
sonal power  loves  to  make  his  annual  picnic'' — a 
popular  name,  to  describe  varied  forms  of  East  Side 
happiness — an  all-day  affair  at  a  great  garden"  up 
Harlemward,  beginning  early  in  the  day,  with  the 
women  and  children,  for  whom  all  sorts  of  entertain- 
ment are  given  free,  with  free  refreshments,  and  con- 
tinuing well  on  into  the  night.  I  have  seen  this  leader 
stand  as  at  a  reception,  meeting  and  greeting  each  one 
of  an  interminable  stream,  apparently  knowing  every- 
one, calling  most  by  name;  I  have  seen  the  men  im- 
mensely proud  at  being  recognized  and  greeted  and 
having  their  hands  shaken,  and  have  seen  the  shy 
pride  with  which  their  wives  were  led  forward  to  re- 
ceive, also,  a  handclasp  and  a  few  cordial  words,  and 
it  has  seemed  as  if  here  could  be  seen  the  strength  of 
Tammany,  the  explanation  of  it  all. 

And  the  leaders,  as  if  to  add  to  the  mediaeval  simili- 
tude, maintain  a  great  degree  of  personal  dignity; 

132 


TAMMANY 


their  cordiality  and  approachableness  do  not  take 
away,  in  the  minds  of  their  following,  from  the  sense 
of  their  being  on  a  higher  plane ;  they  are  friends,  but 
they  make  it  clear  that  they  are  also  rulers. 

The  character  of  many  of  the  acts  of  Tammany 
leaders  and  the  callousness  of  their  attitude  in  regard 
to  such  things  have  given  plenty  of  justification  for 
attack  and  criticism.  But  that  Tammany  could  suffer 
from  the  disclosures  of  the  Tweed  Eing**  and,  after 
a  short  eclipse,  could  again  wield  supreme  power  in 
the  city,  is  the  strongest  proof  of  its  deep-based 
strength.  And  it  did  this  because  its  strength  had 
been  organized  with  practical  wisdom  and  was 
founded  upon  the  affections  of  the  mass  of  the  voters. 

That  the  strength  of  the  organization  is  on  the  wane 
is  mainly  due  to  causes  outside  of  itself.  For  years 
it  withstood  the  attacks  of  foes  throughout  the  State, 
who  tried  to  defeat  its  men  and  measures  at  general 
elections  and  by  means  of  the  Legislature,  but  a 
mighty  blow  at  its  power  was  struck  when  Greater 
New  York  was  organized,  for  the  tremendous  voting 
power  of  Brooklyn,  with  that  of  Long  Island  City  and 
the  Bronx  and  Stat  en  Island,  none  of  which  had  sym- 
pathy with  Tammany,  was  thus  to  be  thrown  into  the 
scale  at  every  election.  But  even  yet  it  is  a  tremen- 
dous power. 

The  secret  of  Tammany's  success — quite  an  open 
secret,  however  little  it  may  have  been  generally  rec- 
ognized— has  been  that  it  has  always  had  many  men  of 
education  and  capacity  in  its  ranks. 

The  Wigwam,  the  headquarters  of  Saint  Tammany 

133 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


— for,  to  add  to  the  freakishness  of  it,  the  appellation 
of  *^Sainf  has  from  early  days  been  attached  to  the 
Indian  chief's  name — is  on  East  14th  Street,  jnst  east 
of  Irving  Place  and  the  Academy  of  Music.  It  is  a 
brick  building,  several  stories  high,  particularly  hum- 
drum and  ordinary  of  aspect ;  and  this  is  odd,  for  con- 
sidering the  important  things,  bad  and  good,  that 
Tammany  has  done,  the  power  that  it  has  wielded, 
the  plans  that  have  been  formulated,  it  would  seem 
natural  to  find  a  headquarters  building  which  looks  as 
the  headquarters  of  such  an  old  and  interesting  or- 
ganization, with  its  mediaeval  form  of  power,  ought  to 
look.  But  nothing  could  be  more  unpicturesque  than 
this  dull  and  commonplace  structure,  or  more  the  re- 
verse of  mediaeval. 

And,  after  all,  it  might  be  suggested  by  its  enemies, 
as  to  the  society  itself,  that  it  possesses  more  of  the 
evil  than  the  mediaeval. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  CITY  OF  FOEEIGNEKS 


10  say  such  things  as  that  New 
York  has  more  Irish  than 
Dublin  and  more  Italians  than 
Eome — and  such  statements, 
incredible  though  they  ap- 
pear, are  not  jests  but  facts — 
only  begins  to  represent  the 
marvel  of  New  York  as  a  for- 
eign city.  More  races  mingle 
here,  and  in  greater  numbers. 


than  in  any  other  city  of  any  period  of  the  world. 

There  are,  too,  some  Americans  in  New  York !  As 
a  New  Yorker,  Julian  Street,  has  admirably  expressed 
it,  an  American  in  New  York  is  at  the  mercy  of  the 
Greeks,  Italians,  Russians,  Irish,  French  and  Swiss, 
with  no  American  consul  to  appeal  to ! 

That  what  used  to  be  considered  the  American  type 
has  almost  disappeared  from  the  New  York  streets,  is 
one  of  the  interesting  changes  that  have  accompanied 
this  making  of  the  city  into  the  melting  pot"  of  the 
world.  As  a  feature  and  a  factor  of  the  streets,  the 
American  type  has  been  largely  overwhelmed,  oblit- 
erated, swamped,  by  the  flood  of  new-comers.    In  the 


135 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


course  of  years  a  new  general  type  will  be  developed ; 
whether  better  or  worse,  more  attractive  or  less  at- 
tractive, to  be  decided  only  by  time. 

Although  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  a  vast  proportion 
of  the  foreigners  who  have  come  in  within  recent  years 
have  brought  but  little  of  their  native  picturesqueness 
with  them,  there  is,  if  one  but  looks  for  it,  much  of  the 
picturesque  to  be  found. 

Turn  aside  from  Fifth  Avenue  at  97th  Street,  and 
go  eastward  for  half  a  block,  and  you  may  go  straight 
into  Moscow ! — for  always,  this  is  a  city  of  potential 
surprises. 

Flush  with  the  sidewalk,  tight  built  between  houses 
on  either  side,  is  a  building  with  onion  towers  of  blu- 
ish green,  onion  towers  with  the  Kremlin  twist ;  and 
you  enter  the  building,  and  are  within  the  Russian 
Cathedral.  Your  first  surprise  is  that,  in  this  city  of 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  Russian  Jews,  there  are  also 
enough  Russians  to  have,  not  synagogues,  but  a  cathe- 
dral. But  so  it  is,  for  these  are  Russians  of  the  Rus- 
sian Church. 

What  first  strikes  you  is  color,  colors  of  the  Orient ; 
and  yet  not  precisely  of  the  Orient,  for  these  colors 
are  of  shades  that  are  entirely  unusual,  shades  that 
give  a  sense  of  the  barbaric,  and  yet  which  are  at  the 
same  time  highly  effective  in  their  combinations.  The 
interior  is  very  high,  but  the  floor  space  is  not  large. 
There  is  a  music  gallery,  filled  with  singers,  and  the 
voices,  all  male  voices,  richly  chant,  without  instru- 
mental accompaniment,  impressive  Russian  music 
with  its  unexpected  time. 

136 


THE  CITY  OF  FOEEIGNEES 


Across  the  entire  front,  behind  the  altar,  is  a  rere- 
dos,  brilliant  with  a  line  of  archwaj^s  each  of  which 
is  filled  by  a  richly  colored  holy  picture ;  and  although 
the  pictures  are  not  art,  as  Western  nations  under- 
stand art,  they  are  striking;  and  perhaps  this  effect- 
iveness comes  because  the  long  line  of  color  adds  to 
the  general  color  effect  of  the  cathedral.  For  the  en- 
tire interior  is  rich  in  colors,  and  the  rose  and  gold 
and  blues,  greens  and  grays  and  pinks,  are  just  fas- 
cinatingly a  little  away  from  the  pinks  and  grays  and 
greens  and  blues  and  goli  and  rose  that  Americans 
know. 

The  officiating  priest,  probably  what  we  should  term 
the  archbishop,  comes  through  an  opening  door  from 
an  inner  shrine  which  seems  a  blaze  of  brilliant  brass, 
like  a  room  of  gold.  He  is  rotund  of  figure  and  oro- 
tund of  voice;  it  is  a  voice  which  rolls  and  rumbles 
and  soars  and  sinks  gloriously.  He  is  clad  in  a  white 
garment,  full-hanging,  touching  the  very  floor,  a  gar- 
ment of  silver-tissue,  a  magnificent  fabric;  and  in 
colorful  contrast  is  his  tall  plain  brimless  Eussian  hat, 
all  black. 

There  are  no  chairs.  The  congregation  stand  ex- 
cept at  kneeling-times  and  then  all  plump  down  with- 
out hesitation,  including  fur-clad  women  and  prosper- 
ous men. 

Most  of  the  congregation  are  ordinary  humble-folk, 
but  all,  and  the  priests  themselves,  seem  of  an  im- 
mense sincerity,  freely  kissing  the  cross,  freely  kissing 
a  holy  picture  as  they  leave;  and,  more  than  this, 
evincing  sincerity  in  their  general  aspect  and  conduct. 

137 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


The  floor  space  is  packed  to  the  doors.  Fully  two- 
thirds  of  the  people  are  men.  Most  of  the  women 
carry  babies,  and  they  edge  their  way  to  the  side  of 
the  altar,  where  a  priest  in  black  deftly  takes  the 
babies  and  carries  them  to  the  back  of  the  altar,  and 
blesses  and  sprinkles  them,  and  hands  the  little  tow- 
heads — for  all  seem  really  tow-heads! — back  to  the 
Tartar-faced  high-cheek-boned  mothers  who  now,  ra- 
diant with  happiness,  eagerly  grasp  them  again  and 
creep  quietly  away.  And  intermittently  and  for  long 
periods  the  choir  sings  and  the  priests  antiphonally 
chant. 

Would  you  go  from  Eussia  to  Southern  France! 
You  may  do  so  by  simply  going  from  here  to  the 
Church  of  Our  Lady  of  Lourdes,  over  in  Brooklyn. 
Behind  the  altar  of  the  church  is  a  representation  of 
the  Grotto  of  Lourdes,  following  it  in  shape  and  so 
far  as  possible  in  size,  with  imitation  rocks  and  shrubs, 
and  in  the  center  of  all  an  actual  opening,  a  cave  or 
grotto  extending  back  for  some  fifteen  feet. 

It  is  a  church  which  carries  on  the  idea,  here  in  mod- 
ern New  York,  of  the  miraculous  healing  of  the  sick  at 
the  shrine  of  Our  Lady  of  Lourdes  in  France.  A 
special  service  that  I  attended  began  at  eight  in  the 
evening.  The  large  church  was  packed  to  the  doors. 
At  the  signal  of  a  handclap,  little  lights  began  to  twin- 
kle all  over  the  church,  for  every  one  of  the  congre- 
gation had  been  holding  a  candle  in  readiness.  Soon 
the  twinkling  became  a  great  soft  glow. 

A  procession  was  silently  formed,  and  it  slowly 
passed  behind  the  altar  and  in  front  of  the  grotto, 

138 


THE  CITY  OF  FOKEIGNEES 


where,  in  a  curving  line,  those  were  now  kneeling  or 
sitting  who  had  come  for  cure.  Leading  the  proces- 
sion was  a  white-veiled  child,  with  a  face  of  wonderful 
sweetness ;  following  her  were  acolytes,  in  white  and 
red,  and  white-veiled  girls,  and  then,  in  irregular  or- 
der, the  entire  congregation,  and  then  came  the  cel- 
ebrant and  his  attendant  priests;  the  celebrant  gor- 
geous in  cloth  of  gold  and  walking  beneath  a  purple 
and  gold  canopy  upheld  by  four  pole-bearers. 

The  celebrant  walked  slowly  past  the  group  of  suf- 
ferers, touching  each  with  the  monstrance,  blessing  all, 
inaudibly  praying  for  all.  And  it  was  pitiful  to  see 
the  sick  ones  gradually  look  about,  in  slow  and  puzzled 
doubt,  as  congregation  and  priests  moved  on  and  left 
them.  Some  sobbed  quietly,  a  few  got  up  and  crept 
away  or  mingled  with  the  departing  congregation ;  a 
few  still  knelt  and  prayed  as,  one  by  one,  the  sexton 
extinguished  the  lights  around  the  grotto. 

Of  Asiatics,  two  races  have  segregated  themselves 
in  New  York  in  considerable  number :  from  the  west- 
ern verge  of  Asia,  the  Syrians,  and,  from  the  eastern 
edge  of  Asia,  the  Chinese,  who  have  a  quarter"  in  a 
tiny  section,  on  Mott  Street,  between  Bayard  Street 
and  Chatham  Square,  with  Pell  Street  and  Doyer 
Street  immediately  adjoining.  It  makes  an  odd  little 
triangular  quarter,  with  an  illusive  sense  of  the  intri- 
cate. 

The  buildings  of  Chinatown  are  mostly  old  and 
almost  tumbledown  tenement  houses;  some  are  even 
the  old  two-story  houses  with  dormered  attics,  but  by 
some  magic  the  Chinese  have  managed  to  infuse  into 

139 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


the  district  more  than  a  touch  of  the  magic  and  the 
mystery  of  the  Orient.  Fire-escapes  glowing  with 
color,  narrow  streets  permeated  by  the  silent-stepping, 
soft-slippered  olive-faced  folk,  with  their  long  eyes 
seeming  to  see  nothing  yet  seeing  all ;  the  shape  of  an 
awning,  the  odd  mingling  of  hues,  the  flowery  gar- 
ments, the  projecting  vertical  Chinese  signs,  the  tun- 
ics, the  queues,  the  trinkets  and  fabrics  and  porcelains 
in  the  windows  of  the  little  shops,  the  idols,  the  vases, 
the  silks,  the  sweetmeats,  the  boxes  of  tea,  all  tell  of 
the  distant  Orient. 

An  old  Chinaman,  at  a  window,  is  playing,  on  a 
Chinese  flute,  a  tune  that  is  older  than  the  Chinese 
Wall:  **Eiver  of  the  Lotos,"  or  some  such  name,  a 
Chinaman  will  tell  you  that  it  is — if  you  are  so  for- 
tunate as  to  hit  upon  a  Chinaman  who  will  translate 
for  you.  But  most  of  them,  even  of  such  as  under- 
stand English,  will  not  talk  with  strangers,  and  pre- 
tend to  know  nothing  but  prices.  And  from  the  olive 
masks  that  serve  them  as  faces  their  slits  of  eyes  look 
out  at  you  with  curious  impassiveness. 

The  soft  clanging  of  a  gong,  the  indistinct  sounds  of 
Chinese  music,  perhaps  the  clash  of  cymbals  or  a  thrill- 
ing dissonance  of  strings,  from  some  entranceway  or 
floating  down  from  some  window  or  coming  vaguely 
out  of  nowhere,  some  slender  strain,  vivid  with  its 
touch  of  something  different  and  alien  and  Oriental ; 
the  soft  voices  in  an  unknown  tongue,  the  serene  and 
silent  gravity ;  all  mark  it  as  a  place  apart.  And  the 
maker  of  rice-cakes : — watch  him  on  a  hot  night  work- 
ing over  the  fire  which  is  burning  in  his  window ;  how 

140 


THE  CITY  OF  FOKEIGNEKS 


oblivious  he  is  to  the  heat  of  the  fire  and  of  the 
night  itself !  how  cool  and  placid  he  is ! 

The  private  affairs  of  Chinatown  are  conducted  by 
a  committee,  of  a  dozen  or  so,  elected  by  themselves, 
and  an  annually  chosen  mayor,''  so  called.  But  the 
rival  Tongs  are  the  forces  which  seem  to  an  onlooker 
the  most  important:  the  On  Leongs  and  Hip  Sings, 
whose  sleepless  rivalry  often  becomes  so  fierce  that 
murder  is  in  the  very  air  and  death  lies  in  wait  at 
corners  and  in  passageways.  And  for  a  few  minutes 
following  a  tragedy  there  is  a  rush  and  a  tangle,  a 
scurry  and  flurry,  a  brief  break  in  the  placidity,  and 
then  the  police,  alike  the  uniformed  and  the  plain- 
clothes men,"  pounce  right  and  left  to  seize  and  in- 
terrogate, while  the  district  swiftly  resumes  its  baf- 
fling calm.  And  it  is  odd  that  such  a  folk,  who  walk 
and  talk  so  quietly,  should  usually  choose  the  noisy 
pistol  rather  than  the  quiet  knife. 

The  police  are  seldom  out  of  sight  in  Chinatown, 
and  the  one  familiar  crime  is  that  of  killing,  and 
the  familiar  misdemeanors  those  of  gambling  and 
opium-smoking. 

There  is  a  joss-house,  with  incense  and  candles, 
that  has  great  attraction  for  the  sight-seers  who  pil- 
grimage to  Chinatown,  and  there  are  restaurants 
where  these  pilgrims  are  given  what  they  take  to  be 
Chinese  food.  There  was  long  a  theater  there,  but 
it  has  lately  been  discontinued :  a  theater  which  fol- 
lowed the  best  traditions  of  the  Chinese  stage,  pre- 
senting plays  without  footlights,  without  scenery, 
without   orchestra,   to   a   Chinese   audience  that 

141 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


watched  without  applause.  Historic  plays  they  usu- 
ally were,  given  with  odd  fancies  as  to  action  and  ac- 
cessories. 

The  tottering  old  tenements  are  cleaner  than  the 
average  tenements  of  the  city:  for  there  is  a  neatness 
and  orderliness  and  dislike  of  dirt  among  these  peo- 
ple. Incredibly  packed  as  they  are  in  their  restricted 
quarters,  in  their  old  houses  with  little  rooms,  their 
neat-handedness,  their  carefulness,  their  self-com- 
mand make  their  district  by  far  the  safest  of  all  the 
tenement  districts  as  to  fire :  in  fact,  a  fire  is  a  very 
rare  event:  and  I  remember  into  what  a  wild  com- 
motion they  were  thrown,  one  day,  by  the  dashing 
of  engines  and  firemen  into  their  narrow  streets  in 
response  to  an  alarm.  It  was  an  excitement  such  as 
no  mere  killing  could  have  caused! 

The  Greeks  of  the  city,  picturesque  from  their 
long-tubed  water-pipes,  are  mostly  merchants  in  a 
small  way:  like  the  Chinese,  they  bring  their  own 
secret  societies  and  racial  ways,  but  if  they  must 
needs  use  a  weapon  they  prefer  the  knife.  But  they 
are  mostly  a  quiet  folk,  not  always  above  a  little 
genial  guile.  I  noticed  one  day  a  Greek  name  over 
the  door  of  an  olive-oil  shop:  a  positively  lovely 
name,  of  precisely  ten  tempting  syllables :  and  I  said 
to  myself  that  here  would  be  the  pure,  unadulterated 
article  from  some  sunny  hill-slope  by  the  blue  ^gean, 
and  when  I  looked  in  the  window  and  saw  bottles  and 
demijohns  of  delectable  shape  I  felt  still  more  pro- 
foundly the  sense  that  here  was  absolute  reliability, 
that  olive  oil  must  be  perfect  if  bought  of  a  Greek 

142 


THE  CITY  OF  FOEETGNEES 


whose  name  took  ten  syllables  and  if  carried  away 
in  one  of  those  delightful  glass  shapes:  but  at  the 
door  I  hesitated — for  at  the  back  of  the  little  shop  I 
caught  sight  of  three  barrels,  on  each  of  which  was 
plainly  stenciled  *  *  South  Carolina  Cotton  Seed  Oil ' ' ! 

Wigged  women  of  the  Ghetto  may  still  be  seen — 
those  of  a  branch  of  the  Yiddish  who,  following  an 
anciently  established  custom,  cut  their  hair  short  at 
the  time  of  their  marriage  so  as  to  make  themselves 
unattractive  to  other  men  than  their  husbands — 
who,  of  course,  are  expected  still  to  be  pleased  with 
their  looks ! — and  thereafter  wear  coarse  black  wigs. 
But  the  number  of  these  wigged  women  seems  to  be 
decreasing:  one  does  not  so  often  see  them:  nor  does 
one  quite  so  often  see  the  old  Hebrew  with  a  long 
curl  hanging  down  in  front  of  each  ear.  And  one 
does  notice,  markedly,  a  new  development  in  the 
American-born  daughters  of  certain  classes  of  the 
Yiddish,  who,  at  work-quitting  time,  throng  on  the 
sidewalks  and  crowd  into  the  street  cars,  with  a  push- 
ing boldness  of  manner  and  appearance  which  makes 
a  new  type  that  is  neither  European  nor  American. 

And  there  are  still  thousands  of  children  in  New 
York,  the  children  of  those  who  have  been  coming 
over  from  Southern  Europe  in  cargo  loads,  who,  in 
spite  of  the  sanitary  efforts  of  school  teachers  and 
visitors  from  the  settlements, ' '  are  sewed  up  when 
winter  comes  on,  not  to  be  unsewed  until  spring, 
thus  keeping  the  children  constantly  warm  and  sav- 
ing the  mothers  a  great  deal  of  trouble ! 

The  Italians  have  retained  in  New  York  a  vast 

143 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


amount  of  their  native  Italian  ways.  In  the  first 
place,  they  feel  at  home  here,  and  especially  those  of 
the  southern  part  of  Italy.  The  tenements  and  tene- 
ment streets  of  New  York  are  curiously  like  those  of 
Naples.  In  both  cities  there  are  solid  rows  of  tall 
buildings,  filling  street  after  street,  with  each  build- 
ing a  hive  of  human  life. 

The  chestnuts  on  long  strings,  the  ninepin-shaped 
skins  hanging  full  of  lard,  the  cheeses  of  all  colors, 
the  dried  mushrooms  in  garlands,  the  silvery  garlic, 
the  pastry-cakes  of  varied  hues,  the  white  sheets  of 
macaroni,  the  red  or  green  peppers,  the  street  cries, 
the  music — it  is  a  veritable  Naples. 

Nor  are  the  Italian  quarters  of  the  city  without 
the  love  of  literature.  There  are  the  lives  of.  S. 
Eocco,  S.  Girolamo,  S.  Luigi,  S.  Anna;  there  are 
little  paper  chapbooks  on  Guglielmo  Tell  and  Pablo  y 
Virginia,  and  I  even  noticed  a  paper-backed  trans- 
lation of  **Ivanhoe,"  which  the  dealer  handled  re- 
spectfully, knowing  it  to  be  the  work  of  an  honored 
author,  and  pronouncing  it,  of  course,  with  the  ac- 
cent on  the  second  syllable,  *^Ee-van-ho-ay." 

Some  of  the  streets  leading  northward  from  Chat- 
ham Square;  the  district  immediately  southwest  of 
Washington  Square;  a  great  district  around  Prince 
Street,  west  of  the  Bowery;  some  of  the  tenement 
streets  of  the  East  Side  up  in  Harlem — such,  to- 
day, are  among  the  most  prominent  of  the  Italian 
quarters. 

And  all  is  so  colorful!  You  see  bright  yellow 
headcloths,  red  kerchiefs,  purple  and  lavender  waists, 

144 


THE  CITY  OF  FOREIGNEES 


neckties  of  magenta  or  pink,  strange  Italian  greens 
and  blues,  a  man  with  a  soft  shirt  in  a  pattern  of  red 
and  yellow  roses,  a  yellow  neck  handkerchief  for  tie 
and  a  cap  of  startling  hue,  a  woman  with  skirt  of  red 
and  waist  of  purple  and  handkerchief  of  blue. 

The  American-born  New  Yorker  has  come  to  like 
the  Italians:  they  are  sunny-dispositioned  and  smil- 
ing and  are  born  with  manners:  they  are  fruit  and 
vegetable  lovers:  and  these  things  make  them  seem 
human  and  kindred  in  spirit. 

Saint's  Day  in  an  Italian  street  of  New  York  is 
unreservedly  an  Italian  festa.  The  streets,  arched 
with  little  oil  lights  in  tumblers  of  colored  glass,  the 
flags,  the  banners,  the  festoonings,  the  tinsel,  the 
flowers,  the  color  and  life  of  the  throngs  that  are  at 
once  so  gay  and  so  devout,  the  scarlets  and  violets 
and  saffrons  and  greens,  the  baldachino  set  up  in  the 
open  air,  in  the  open  street,  with  its  effigies  of  the 
Madonna  and  Child — yes ;  it  is  a  veritable  Naples ! 

And,  as  in  Naples,  the  language  of  the  hands,  the 
arms,  the  fingers,  an  elaborate  language  of  gesticula- 
tion, is  freely  used.  It  came  into  use  over  there  from 
the  ease  that  it  gave  to  conversation  between  any  one 
in  an  upper  room  and  one  on  the  pavement,  and  the 
importance  was  accentuated  by  the  constant  police 
surveillance  of  the  Neapolitan  Camorra. 

You  see  an  Italian,  at  an  upper  window,  make  a 
swift  motion  of  the  hands,  away  from  the  body,  with 
the  palms  outward  and  a  handkerchief  in  the  right 
hand;  and  one  who  understands  the  sign  language 
would  know  that  he  is  saying  to  some  distant  friend, 

145 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


don't  want  to  go."  The  motion  is  slow,  with  a 
long  sweep,  and  with  the  head  thrown  back,  whereas 
precisely  the  same  motion,  with  the  head  held  nor- 
mal and  still,  and  the  motion  itself  made  short  and 
several  times  repeated,  means,  **I11  go" — and  such 
a  message  may  be  the  acknowledgment  of  an  invita- 
tion or  perhaps  a  warning.  A  sweep  of  the  right 
hand,  curving  outward,  with  forefinger  extended 
and  head  slightly  inclined  forward,  means,  ^'To- 
morrow. ' ' 

The  motions  and  signs  and  variants  are  infinite. 
As  an  Italian  put  it,  one  day  when  I  spoke  of  this 
language  of  gesticulation — his  name  was,  delight- 
fully, Giannottasio,  and  he  had  translated  his  first 
name  into  Michael — *'For  anything  the  heart  say, 
we  have  the  gestickle." 


146 


CHAPTER  XII 


TWO  NOTABLE  SQUAEES 


OW  much  higher,  one  won- 
ders, was  the  Tower  of 
Babel,  than  this  which  so 
overtops  all  of  central  Man- 
hattan? Not  so  tall,  surely. 
This  tower  of  the  Metropoli- 
tan Life  building  rises  to  the 
height  of  seven  hundred 
feet:  indeed,  to  write  with 
meticulousness,    one  must 


needs  say  seven  hundred  feet  and  three  inches.  Un- 
fortunately, no  record  was  left  us  as  to  the  Tower  of 
Babel,  but  surely  it  was  not  quite  so  high  as  this? 

Nor  did  Babel  look  down  upon  such  a  confusion 
of  tongues  as  does  this  sky-piercing  tower  of  New 
York.  And  instead  of,  as  with  Babel,  the  confusion 
of  tongues  bringing  about  a  scattering  of  the  people 
to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  it  means  more  and  more  a 
drawing  together  of  people  from  the  ends  of  the 
earth. 

The  main  part  of  the  building  rises  massively,  in 
its  light  gray  stone,  story  after  story,  and  above  this 
the  tower,  superb  in  design,  continues  the  upward 


147 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


mounting,  rising  as  if  interminably,  and  at  length, 
and  foursidedly,  coming  to  an  end  in  a  pillar-sup- 
ported octagon  surmounted  by  a  lantern  of  gold. 

It  is  not  only  that  the  building  has  massiveness 
and  size,  not  only  that  it  harbors  daily  as  many  peo- 
ple as  would  make  up  the  population  of  many  a  busy 
town — for  the  offices  collectively  have  over  three  thou- 
sand occupants — but  that  it  has  positive  distinction, 
and  splendid  beauty.  The  tower  would  be  deemed 
a  thing  of  beauty  in  any  city  of  the  world,  no  mat- 
ter how  rich  in  traditions  of  architecture. 

The  clock  and  its  solemn  striking,  its  flashing- 
lights  to  mark  the  time  noiselessly  at  night,  add  to 
the  interest  of  it  all.  And  to  mention  the  size  and 
weight  of  one  seemingly  little  thing,  far  up  there, 
will  give  an  unexpected  impression  of  size  and  im- 
portance; the  apparently  little  thing  being  the  min- 
ute-hand of  the  clock,  which,  in  actuality,  is  seventeen 
feet  in  length  and  weighs  half  a  ton !  Literally,  time 
weighs  heavily  on  the  hands — an  unusual  thing  in 
New  York. 

The  totals  of  business  transacted  in  this  great 
building,  by  the  company  which  built  it,  befit  the  size 
and  cost  of  the  structure:  and  yet,  as  a  contrast,  I 
one  day  came  upon  a  curious  fact,  which  is,  that  not 
only  does  the  normal  and  usual  business  of  such  a 
company  extend  to  all  corners  of  the  country,  but 
that  it  also  extends  to  a  totally  unexpected  quarter 
— to  the  almshouse  dwellers  on  BlackwelPs  Island! 
For  many  a  pauper,  looking  from  the  Island  to  this 
superb  tower  of  an  insurance  company,  glistening 

148 


TWO  NOTABLE  SQUARES 


in  the  sun,  plainly  in  view,  knows  that  it  represents 
escape  from  a  pauper 's  grave. 

On  the  same  side  of  the  square,  but  in  the  farther 
corner,  is  Madison  Square  Garden,  designed  by  Stan- 
ford White;  but,  as  with  everything  in  New  York, 
one  cannot  with  certainty  write  *4s,"  for  everything 
that  stands  is  but  waiting  the  usual  New  York  fate, 
and  Madison  Square  Garden,  with  all  its  traditions 
of  fashion  and  Horse  Shows  and  great  public  meet- 
ings, is  understood  to  be  doomed. 

It  was  a  superb  architectural  thought  that  put  this 
building  here,  in  its  immense  area,  with  its  Spanish 
architecture  and  its  Giralda-like  tower  and  with  so 
charming  and  graceful  a  Diana  over  all.  In  the 
towering  beauty  of  its  tawnj  terra-cotta  and  brick 
it  is  a  charming  thing,  and  its  tower  and  its  arcaded 
sidewalks  give  a  distinctly  foreign  air. 

The  tower  was  once  so  high,  now  overtopped 
though  it  is  by  the  surrounding  buildings,  that  from 
its  summit  the  Battery  could  be  seen.  Well,  changes 
come — and  although  the  Battery  can  no  longer  be 
seen  from  the  Diana 's  tower,  it  may  still  be  seen  from 
the  far  loftier  tower  of  the  Metropolitan. 

On  the  same  side  of  the  square  is  the  notable  and 
uncompromisingly  classic  Madison  Square  Presby- 
terian Church,  better  known  as  Doctor  Parkhurst's 
Church,"  superbly  fine,  with  its  front  a  triumph  of 
restrained  color,  and  Pantheon-like  in  design.  The 
blue  in  the  pediment,  the  white  of  the  angels,  the  dull- 
gold  tops  of  the  pillars,  with  blue  behind,  the  splen- 
did granite  shafts  of  the  pillars,  of  a  gray  that  is 

149 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


almost  green,  the  apple-green  overlaid  with  gold  in 
the  line  of  the  eaves,  the  yellow  and  cream — yet  all 
so  qniet,  so  harmonious,  so  unobtrusive!  These 
three  great  buildings  on  one  side  of  the  square  are 
so  important  and  so  interesting  that  the  eye  almost 
fails  to  see  the  fine  white  building  of  the  Appellate 
Court,  which  would  attract  notice  in  any  other  city. 

The  Fifth  Avenue  Hotel,  for  so  many  years  an  im- 
portant center  of  New  York  life,  stood  facing  out 
from  the  opposite  side  of  the  square,  where  Broad- 
way crosses  Fifth  Avenue  on  a  long  rakish  angle. 
Long,  very  long,  is  the  list  of  famous  folk  who  were 
guests  there,  of  the  politicians  who  made  their  head- 
quarters there,  of  the  notable  receptions  that  were 
held  there.  For  a  quarter  of  a  century  it  was  pre- 
eminently the  most  prominent  hotel  of  the  city. 

It  was  in  this  hotel,  and  I  mention  it  not  so  much 
for  its  importance  as  for  its  curious  interest,  that  the 
minister,  Burchard,  made  the  alliterative  declaration 
about  **Eum,  Romanism  and  Rebellion''  which  de- 
feated Blaine  for  the  Presidency  and  elected  Cleve- 
land. The  declaration  attracted  no  apparent  atten- 
tion when  uttered:  the  politicians  who  heard  it 
scarcely  noticed  it :  but  the  newspapers  published  it 
and  it  swept  like  wildfire  through  the  country. 

At  the  edge  of  the  Fifth  Avenue  sidewalk,  at  the 
northern  end  of  the  square,  is  a  statue  of  Farragut, 
on  a  bench-like  base,  the  base  and  statue  together 
making  a  united  design  of  unusual  effectiveness ;  the 
statue  being  by  St.  Gaudens  and  the  base  by  Stanford 
White. 

150 


THE  TOWERS  OF  MADISON  SQUARE 


TWO  NOTABLE  SQUAEES 

And  one  remembers  that  the  funeral  procession  of 
Farragut,  in  1870,  went  by  this  spot.  The  Admiral 
had  died  in  New  Hampshire  and  his  body  was  brought 
to  New  York  for  burial  in  Woodlawn  Cemetery,  and 
as  it  was  borne  up  Fifth  Avenue  and  through  Mad- 
ison Square,  followed  by  thousands  of  troops,  and 
the  most  distinguished  civilians,  and  President  Grant 
and  members  of  his  Cabinet,  a  drenching  rain  was 
steadily  falling. 

Madison  Square  has  other  statues  also,  including 
one  of  Eoscoe  Conkling  and  one  of  Chester  Arthur; 
reminders,  these,  of  a  close  personal  and  political 
friendship,  bitterly  broken  by  the  tragedy  of  Gar- 
field's death  and  the  succession  of  Arthur  to  the  Pres- 
idency. 

What  a  figure  Conkling  once  made!  How  power- 
ful he  was — and  now,  almost  forgotten.  Yet  his  con- 
test with  President  Garfield  roused  the  nation  to  in- 
tense excitement;  his  holding  together  of  the  three 
hundred  delegates  for  Grant,  for  ballot  after  ballot, 
day  after  day,  at  the  National  Convention  where  the 
effort  was  made  to  give  Grant  a  third  term,  roused  the 
nation  to  intense  even  though  reluctant  admiration. 
A  great  figure :  but  somehow,  not  much  more  than  his 
superciliousness  seems  to  be  perpetuated  by  this 
bronze  and  he  died  from  the  effects  of  walking  out 
in  a  terrible  March  blizzard — just  as  if  it  had  been  the 
Plains  instead  of  the  center  of  Manhattan. 

Over  yonder  sits  Seward,  looking  a  little  bored  and 
thoughtful  on  his  noisy  corner,  and  with  some  bronze 
books  tucked  under  his  bronze  chair.    In  this  square 

151 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


too  is  the  Worth  monument,  a  tall  memorial  over  the 
grave  of  a  worthy  officer,  now  quite  forgotten,  who 
fought  bravely  in  a  war  of  which  America  has  al- 
ways been  ashamed. 

Not  the  least  among  the  attractions  of  Madison 
Square  is  an  auction  establishment,  with  an  unprom- 
ising exterior,  which,  once  entered,  leads  up  and  back 
in  labyrinthine  fascination,  with  stairs  and  passages 
and  one  large  room  after  another.  Here  at  this 
Christie's  or  Hotel  Drouot  of  New  York  have  been 
held  many  of  the  city's  most  interesting  sales  of  col- 
lections of  antiques,  paintings  and  objects  of  art. 

As  night  comes  on,  Madison  Square  becomes  a  spe- 
cial haven  for  derelicts,  many  of  whom  sleep  on  the 
benches  until  the  policeman  arouses  them  by  beating 
on  their  feet ;  and  as  for  women  derelicts,  who  would, 
if  they  could,  sleep  sitting,  the  benches  are  too  high 
to  permit  them  to  put  their  feet  on  the  ground. 

And  finally,  before  leaving  Madison  Square,  the 
question  comes  whether,  after  all,  the  widest  and 
longest  fame,  in  definite  connection  with  it,  has  not 
been  won  by  Miss  Flora  MacFlimsy  of  Madison 
Square,  whose  complaint,  so  characteristic  of  the  ex- 
travagance of  New  York,  was  that  she  had  nothing  to 
wear. 

A  few  blocks  south  of  Madison  Square  is  Union 
Square,  with  Broadway  leading  into  and  away  from 
it  and  sweeping  curiously  along  one  side.  Until  re- 
cent years  it  was  one  of  the  greatest  centres  of  New 
York  life,  but  it  has  been  left  behind  in  the  city's 
swift  advance. 

152 


TWO  NOTABLE  SQUARES 


Here,  where  Fourth  Avenue  reaches  Union  Square, 
stands  an  equestrian  statue  of  Washington ;  a  capable, 
excellent  statue ;  on  the  spot  where  the  General  stood 
when  he  was  welcomed  by  the  citizens  of  New  York  on 
the  great  day  when  he  returned,  with  his  army,  to 
take  possession  at  the  time  of  the  evacuation  of  the 
city  by  the  British. 

It  has  frequently  been  stated  that  the  statue  stood 
originally  where  Cooper  Union  now  stands;  but  I 
think  that  misapprehension  arose  from  the  fact  that 
Fourth  Avenue,  from  Cooper  Union  to  Union  Square, 
used  to  be  deemed  part  of  the  Bowery,  and  that  this 
statue  stood,  therefore,  at  **the  head  of  the  Bowery," 
so  that,  when  *^the  head  of  the  Bowery"  came  to  be 
at  Cooper  Union,  the  wrong  idea  likewise  came  as  to 
the  location  of  the  statue.  The  great  occasion  of 
Washington's  reception  makes  it  extremely  interest- 
ing to  have  the  precise  locality  in  mind. 

Not  far  away  is  a  Lafayette,  eagerly  bending  for- 
ward on  his  pedestal,  as  if  to  hasten  to  the  great 
leader  whom  he  so  worshiped ;  as  if,  indeed,  actually 
in  the  act  of  motion  toward  his  chief.  At  least  it  is 
so  as  I  write,  though  in  this  city  of  change,  Lafayette 
may  be  made  to  face  in  some  other  direction,  or 
Washington  may  be  moved  away,  if  it  happens  to  be 
some  commissioner's  whim  or  if  it  should  be  de- 
manded by  some  matter  of  subway  construction,  in 
this  burrow  of  Manhattan. 

The  statue  of  Lafayette  brings  the  memory  of  a 
ride,  one  cold  and  drizzly  morning,  toward  that  lonely 
part  of  France,  the  Nez  de  Jobourg,  in  a  tiny  dili- 

153 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 

gence;  for  an  old  Frenchman,  a  fellow  passenger, 
learning  that  I  was  an  American,  told  me,  with  pride, 
that  Lafayette  went  to  America  to  aid  in  gaining  our 
freedom,  and  then  he  told  me  that  another  French- 
man, Bartholdi,  had  made  for  America  a  great  statue 
of  Liberty  to  stand  in  New  York  harbor !  Confirma- 
tory knowledge  of  these  things  on  the  part  of  the 
American  delighted  the  old  Norman  very  much,  and 
he  was  ecstatically  happy  when  I  told  him  that  the 
statue  of  Lafayette  himself  stood  in  a  square  called 
Union  Square,  in  New  York  City,  and  that  Bartholdi 
was  the  maker  of  the  statue ! 

Ever,  in  New  York,  the  human  happening  is  of  im- 
portance: and  ever  there  are  occurring  things  dra- 
matic, full  of  interest.  And  here,  in  Union  Square, 
there  comes  the  picture  of  a  political  meeting,  when 
a  young  orator  from  the  West,  who  was  looked  upon 
in  that,  his  first  national  campaign,  as  a  sort  of 
prophet,  was  to  speak  here  in  his  o^vn  campaign  for 
the  Presidency. 

It  was  a  rainy  night.  A  huge  crowd,  with  umbrel- 
las raised,  massed  in  front  of  the  stand.  After  a 
long  wait  a  carriage  rounded  a  corner  and  came  to- 
ward the  stand,  and  beside  it,  in  the  rain,  came  a 
running  mass  of  men.  The  orator,  Bryan,  came  out 
upon  the  platform — and  every  umbrella  was  instantly 
lowered  and  not  a  man  moved  away,  though  the  rain 
poured  down;  all  stood  there,  massed  and  expectant, 
heedless  of  the  drenching,  waiting  pathetically  for 
the  expected  words  of  gold — though  I  should  in  this 
case  call  them  silver.    But  the  candidate  opened  his 

154 


TWO  NOTABLE  SQUARES 


lips  only  to  ask  that  patient  and  drenched  gathering 
to  excuse  him  from  speaking! — as  if  to  show  that  not 
every  man,  given  opportunity,  is  able  to  rise  to  the 
opportunity. 

This  square  used  to  be  a  notable  place  for  public 
gatherings  and  we  are  told  that  in  April  of  1861  over 
one  hundred  thousand  people  came  here,  gathering 
in  a  patriotic  meeting,  presided  over  by  the  **If  any 
man  dares  to  haul  down  the  American  flag''  Governor, 
John  A.  Dix. 

At  the  southwest  corner  of  Union  Square,  calm  and 
thoughtful  at  a  little  whirlpool  of  traffic,  is  Abraham 
Lincoln  in  bronze,  overlooking  what  was  long  deemed 
the  most  dangerous  street  crossing  in  America, 
**Dead  Man's  Curve,"  whose  perils  are  now  outdone 
on  every  street  and  road  since  the  advent  of  the 
automobile. 

Near  this  statue,  just  one  block  down,  at  Univer- 
sity Place  and  13th  Street,  there  has  been  set  into  a 
building  a  tablet  which  Lincoln  would  have  read  with 
grievous  pity  and  pride:  for  it  tells  that  from  this 
spot,  on  March  27,  1861,  the  Ninth  Regiment 
marched  away  in  defense  of  the  Union,  850  strong" 
and  that  on  June  11, 1864,  ^^the  return  home  was  with 
17  officers  and  78  enlisted  men." 

Both  of  these  squares,  Union  and  Madison,  have  as- 
sociation with  the  most  famous  name  in  American 
gastronomy.  For,  in  turn,  each  of  these  squares  has 
had  the  world-famous  Delmonico's. 

The  original  Delmonico  was,  almost  a  century  ago, 
chef  and  waiter  and  proprietor  of  a  tiny  restaurant 

155 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


on  William  Street,  with  chairs,  tables,  table-ware  and 
cutlery  of  the  commonest.  But  the  supreme  excel- 
lence of  his  cooking  brought  him  custom,  and  he 
moved  to  a  larger  place,  and  then,  with  his  brother, 
to  a  still  larger  at  William  and  Beaver  Streets  (still 
operated  under  the  Delmonico  name),  and  as  his  sons 
grew  to  manhood  they  also  joined  him,  and  a  place 
was  opened  on  Broadway  near  the  City  Hall.  Long 
ago,  this  main  establishment  was  removed  to  Union 
Square,  and  then  to  a  building  just  past  the  northern 
edge  of  Madison  Square,  and  at  length,  years  ago,  to 
the  present  locality  at  Fifth  Avenue  and  44th  Street. 

Just  before  Dickens  sailed  for  home,  in  1868,  after 
his  second  visit  to  the  United  States,  he  was  given 
a  banquet,  at  the  Delmonico 's  of  that  time,  by  some 
two  hundred  men  of  the  American  press,  and  the  bill 
of  fare  named  such  literary  dishes  as  *'creme  d*as- 
perges  a  la  Dumas,"  ^^cotelettes  a  la  Fenimore  Coo- 
per,'' ^^agneau  farci  a  la  Walter  Scott,"  and  ^4es 
petites  Zimballes  a  la  Dickens." 

Horace  Greeley  presided,  and  told  how,  many  years 
before,  he  had  chosen,  to  print  in  his  first  weekly 
newspaper,  a  short  story,  that  he  had  noticed  in  an 
English  periodical,  written  by  an  unknown  author 
who  signed  the  name  '*Boz!" — the  story  being  ^*A 
Passage  in  the  Life  of  Mr.  Watkins  Tottle." 

It  was  at  this  dinner  that  Dickens  made  his  famous 
declaration  that,  on  his  arrival  in  England,  he  would, 
in  his  own  English  periodical,  '^manfully,  promptly, 
and  plainly  in  my  own  person,"  tell  of  the  ''gigantic 
changes"  that  he  had  seen,  and  that  he  would  also 

156 


TWO  NOTABLE  SQUAKES 


tell  that,  wherever  I  have  been,  in  the  smallest  place 
equally  with  the  largest,  I  have  been  received  with  un- 
surpassed politeness,  delicacy,  sweet-temper,  hospi- 
tality, and  consideration,^'  and  that  ^Hhis  testimony, 
so  long  as  my  descendants  have  any  legal  right  in  my 
books,  I  shall  cause  to  be  published,  as  an  appendix, 
to  every  copy  of  those  two  books  of  mine  in  which  I 
have  referred  to  America.  And  this  I  will  do,  be- 
cause I  regard  it  as  an  act  of  plain  justice  and  honor. ' ' 
So  Dickens  **ate  crow,"  and  a  very  large  dish  of  it, 
at  that  dinner,  though  it  was  not  on  the  bill  of  fare — 
not  even  under  the  disguise  of  ^^corbeau  a  la  Dick- 
ens. ' ' 


157 


CHAPTER  XIII 


GRAMEKCY  AND  STUYVESANT  AND  OLD  CHELSEA 


EW  YORK  architects  and  build- 
ers reveled  for  years  in  the 
building  of  humdrum,  high- 
stoop  houses:  many  and  many 
a  street  is  still  double-lined 
with  their  monotony:  and  yet, 
that  these  commonplace  build- 
ings may  be  made  into  build- 
ings of  beauty,  that  the  com- 
monplace may  be  changed  into 
charm,  has  been  shown  on  East  19th  Street.  For 
that  street,  for  a  short  distance  east  of  Irving 
Place,  has  been  delightfully  made  into  a  studio 
street  by  the  intelligent  cooperation  of  artists  and 
architects,  who  have  taken  in  hand  the  prosaic  old 
houses  that  have  long  stood  there — fortunately,  not 
the  really  narrow  and  mean  houses  of  which  the  city 
has  so  many — and  have  altered  them  by  taking  away 
the  steppy  stoops,  by  setting  down  the  doors  to  the 
level  of  the  sidewalks,  by  adding  little  wrought  iron 
balconies,  with  flower-boxes,  by  changing  roof -lines, 
by  putting  on  gables  of  old  Dutch  shape,  by  using  red 
tiles,  by  differently  grouping  the  windows,  by  chang- 

158 


GRAMEECY,  STUYVESANT,  OLD  CHELSEA 


ing  the  glass  to  smaller  panes,  by  the  use  of  pictur- 
esquely heavy  sash,  by  using  such  wood-work  colors, 
quiet  but  at  the  same  time  noticeable,  as  verdigris 
green,  by  putting  brass  knockers  on  the  doors.  Such 
things  have  been  done  with  comparatively  small  ex- 
pense; nothing  compared  with  tearing  down  the  old 
houses  and  putting  up  new;  and  the  resultant  effect, 
with  these  made-over  buildings,  is  a  street  of  repose 
and  good  living  and  distinction  and  charm.  On  one 
of  the  roofs  are  a  couple  of  storks,  and,  absurd  though 
the  idea  may  seem,  the  effect  is  not  in  the  least  ab- 
surd but  very  pictorial. 

That  artists  and  others  who  love  the  picturesque  in 
Europe,  refer  to  this  street  as  being  *4ike  a  bit  of 
Paris, **a  bit  of  London,''  **a  bit  of  Amsterdam" — 
each  one  reminded  of  some  place  which  holds  pictur- 
esque memories  for  him — represents  the  most  cordial 
appreciation  of  the  efforts  of  those  who  carried  out 
the  alterations.  It  is  really  something  much  better 
than  a  bit  of  Amsterdam  or  London  or  Paris,  it  is  an 
expression  of  American  blood  and  feeling,  here  in 
New  York,  and  its  importance  lies  in  its  showing  how 
easily  some  miles  of  at  present  humdrum  houses  could 
be  altered  to  some  form  of  excellent  good  looks. 

As  if  with  intention,  those  who  chose  this  particular 
section  for  picturesque  living  chose  one  that  lies  be- 
tween picturesque  old  Gramercy  Park  and  the  still 
picturesque  Stuyvesant  Square,  and  near  to  both. 

To  many,  even  of  those  who  know  their  New  York 
well,  Gramercy  Park  is  a  place  that  is  hard  to  find: 
it  seems  not  to  be  just  where  you  expect  it  to  be :  and 

159 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


yet  it  is  eminently  central  and  convenient,  between 
Fourth  and  Third  Avenues,  with  its  north  side  21st 
Street  and  its  south  side  20th  Street,  and  with  Irving 
Place  leading  to  it  from  below  and  Lexington  Ave- 
nue from  above. 

It  is  a  pleasant  park,  a  tiny  little  park,  a  charming 
little  park,  an  attractive,  felicitous,  captivating  little 
park,  a  park  of  which  it  may  be  said  that  it  is  one  of 
the  things  that  still  stand  for  good  old  New  York 
living  and  at  the  same  time  that  it  is  remindful  of 
many  a  little  park  in  England. 

Here,  in  former  days,  dwelt  David  Dudley  Field  and 
Cyrus  W.  Field,  John  Bigelow  and  Nicholas  Fish  and 
the  Coopers  and  Stanford  White;  and  most  of  the 
old  houses  still  remain.  It  is  not  that  they  are,  in- 
dividually, models  for  other  buildings,  but  that  as  a 
whole  they  give  a  sense  of  the  comfortable  and  worth 
while. 

The  park,  as  a  small  residence  section,  buttressed 
by  a  little  residential  section  in  the  streets  immedi- 
ately around  it,  is  notable,  close  as  it  is  to  Broadway, 
to  busy  23d  Street,  to  the  rush  of  Third  Avenue.  It 
is  reposeful.  In  that,  I  think,  lies  its  chief  merit. 
It  is  a  quiet  little  pool,  in  the  heart  of  swift  currents 
of  humanity  and  business. 

What  has  kept  it  a  place  apart  has  been,  princi- 
pally, the  greenery  of  its  central  space,  its  trees,  its 
shrubs,  its  flowers,  its  grass.  For  all  this  space  is 
enclosed  within  an  iron  fence,  and  only  the  owners  of 
property  facing  into  the  park  have  keys,  and  thus 
strict  privacy  is  assured  in  its  walks  and  paths,  and 

160 


ORAMERCY,  STUYVESANT,  OLD  CHELSEA 


a  few  nursemaids  and  children  are  usually,  in  pleasant 
weather,  to  be  seen  there,  happy  and  cheerful.  This 
shutting  off  into  exclusiveness  of  the  central  space  is 
not  only  successful  in  giving  and  maintaining  the  air 
of  charming  seclusion,  but  it  has  kept  the  park  from 
being  overrun  by  tenement  dwellers ;  a  tenement  sec- 
tion is  within  a  few  minutes '  walk,  and  the  park  would 
tempt  to  general  gregarious  gathering  were  there 
benches  there  and  a  space  for  public  playing. 

Naturally,  clubs  were  drawn  into  this  quiet  little 
eddy.  The  Princeton  Club  was  attracted  to  the  oc- 
cupancy of  a  fine  old  house  on  the  northern  side.  On 
the  southern  side,  at  15,  is  the  mansion  that  was 
the  home  of  Samuel  J.  Tilden,  lawyer,  governor,  al- 
most President,  and  the  building  was  acquired  by  the 
National  Arts  Club ;  it  is  a  mansion  of  huge  size,  built 
in  a  style  of  chocolate-colored  grandeur,  a  large-win- 
dowed house,  with  rooms  cavernously  large.  Next 
door,  at  16,  is  the  Players '  Club,  also  a  large  building, 
of  comfort  and  spaciousness,  the  fine  gift  of  the  great 
Edwin  Booth,  who  gave  everything  freely,  house  and 
furniture,  merely  reserving  one  room  for  his  own  use 
and  one  for  Lawrence  Barrett — the  close  friendship 
of  these  two  actors,  who  might  so  easily  have  been 
unfriendly  rivals,  being  one  of  the  treasured  mem- 
ories of  the  American  stage.  Booth's  room  is  pre- 
served as  it  was  on  the  day  he  died,  even  to  the  book 
which  he  was  reading,  which  is  open  at  the  page  where 
he  left  it  when  death  came. 

Gramercy  Park,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  none  of 
its  houses  is  very  old,  gives  an  impression  of  pleasant 

161 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


old-timeness ;  or,  perhaps  one  might  say  that  it  looks, 
not  old,  but  middle-aged.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  was 
not  laid  out  and  set  aside  as  a  park  until  the  early 
1830 's. 

It  is  a  pleasantly  reposeful  spot  for  which  New  York 
ought  to  be — and  is — thankful :  and  I  like  to  think  of  it 
as  owing  its  name,  in  some  never  to  be  explained  way, 
to  this  idea  of  thankfulness.  The  origin  of  the  name 
has  been  laboriously  traced,  and  perhaps  but  fanci- 
fully, to  **Krom-merssche,''  meaning  Crooked  little 
swamp ' ' ;  but  I  should  like  to  think  of  it  as  being  the 
delightful  ^^Gramercy''  of  the  olden  time  and  of 
Spenser  and  Walter  Scott,  meaning  not  only  thanks, 
but  * ^ grandmerci, ' '  many  and  unusual  thanks!  I 
have  heard  the  peasants  in  out  of  the  way  corners  of 
ancient  Normandy  use  the  old  time  syllables  with  de- 
lightfully prolonged  accent  on  the  first — pronounced, 
I  need  not  say,  *  ^  grah-mer-cy ' ' — and  I  like  to  think 
that  the  long-ago  use  of  the  word  in  New  York  may 
have  come  from  some  picturesque  connection  vdth.  the 
picturesque  Huguenots  who  refugeed  here,  or  perhaps 
from  some  of  the  French  who  came  in  such  numbers  at 
the  time  of  the  Revolution.  Of  course,  the  laboriously 
made  out  * '  Krom-merssche  ^ '  derivation  would  also  be 
interesting  from  its  connection  with  the  picturesque 
Dutch;  but  the  Dutch  gave  name  to  another  old- 
fashioned  park,  Stuyvesant  Square,  just  a  few  blocks 
from  Gramercy,  so  there  would  be  no  partiality  in 
giving  Gramercy  to  the  French  and  leaving  Stuy\^es- 
ant  with  its  derivation  from  the  domain  of  the  worthy 
Petrus. 

162 


GRAMERCY,  STUYVESANT,  OLD  CHELSEA 


Stuyvesant  Square  is  a  large  area,  consisting  of 
two  separate  sections  divided  by  Second  Avenue,  a 
little  north  of  14th  Street,  each  section  enclosed  within 
high  iron  fencing,  and  unusually  thick  with  trees  and 
shrubs.  Far  down  town  though  this  now  is,  and  over 
in  the  midst  of  the  thronging  East  Side,  it  is  one  of 
the  peaceful  places  in  New  York.  Like  Gramercy,  it 
is  restful  and  quiet,  except  for  the  gay  twitter  of  birds, 
and  this  twitter  itself  seems  to  add  to  the  sense  of 
quietness  and  rest;  and  yet,  though  an  attractive 
place,  it  is  without  the  quite  unusual  charm  of  Gra- 
mercy. 

Facing  the  south-west  corner  are  some  buildings  of 
dullish  red,  looking  out  into  the  greenery;  Quaker 
buildings  these,  already  growing  old,  for  they  were 
built  in  1860;  and  they  are  built  with  much  of  the 
old-fashioned  prim  Quaker  restraint  such  as  one  finds 
with  the  old  Quaker  meeting-houses  in  the  vicinity  of 
Philadelphia.  The  dull  red  of  the  brick,  the  white  of 
the  stone  trimmings,  the  white  of  the  slender  pillared 
prim  porticoes  with  their  prim  tops,  the  brown  shut- 
ters, the  window  shades  of  Quaker  drab,  all  unite  to 
make  a  primly  pleasant  impression. 

Adjoining,  and  as  if  for  a  contrast  to  Quaker  sim- 
plicity, is  the  brown  mass  of  St.  George's  Church, 
long  the  most  fashionable  Episcopalian  Church,  even 
after  fashion  so  long  ago  deserted  this  old  Knicker- 
bocker center.  It  is  a  great  brown  structure,  with 
two  towers  indicated  but  never  built  up.  It  is  a  mass- 
ive-fronted building  of  generous  and  dark  interior. 
Its  pulpit  at  the  front  of  the  altar  is  elaborately 

163 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 

designed  and  carved,  and  is  inscribed  with  the  state- 
ment that  it  was  put  up  by  the  congregation  in  mem- 
ory of  J.  P.  Morgan,  who  was  born  in  Connecticut 
in  1837  and  who  died  in  Kome  in  1913.  Such  a  man, 
a  veritable  emperor  of  finance  that  he  was,  actually 
more  powerful,  more  of  a  world  force,  than  by  far  the 
greater  number  of  those  who  wore  the  Eoman  purple, 
would  have  felt  his  fancy  titillated — for  he  was  a  man 
of  imagination — could  he  have  known  that  it  was  in 
once  imperial  Eome  that  he  was  to  end  his  financially 
imperial  days.  But  I  have  seen  him  in  this  church, 
gravely  walking  down  the  aisle  and  gravely  passing 
the  collection  plate  to  other  men  of  wealth,  thus  de- 
manding money  of  them  even  on  the  Sabbath;  and 
somehow  there  came  the  impression  of  Wall  Street 
rather  than  of  Eome. 

The  square  used  to  be  a  center  of  wealthy  and  cul- 
tivated life,  but  wealth  and  fashion  have  left;  they 
would  not  stay  over  here,  east  of  Third  Avenue. 

Forming,  in  a  general  way,  across  Manhattan  from 
side  to  side,  a  line  of  old-fashioned  neighborhoods 
which  still  retain  their  old-fashioned  charm,  it  seems 
as  if  Stuyvesant  Square  and  Gramercy  Park  come  nat- 
urally into  association  with  attractive  old  Chelsea. 
And  always,  with  Chelsea,  there  comes  prominently  to 
mind  its  association  with  Santa  Claus :  for,  incongru- 
ous though  it  seems  for  any  part  of  this  ultra-modern 
city  to  be  associated  with  so  old-fashioned  a  belief,  so 
quaint  and  old-fashioned  a  fantasy  as  that  concerning 
good  old  Santa  Claus,  New  York  has  precisely  that 
association,  because  of  Chelsea:  for  it  was  a  New 

164 


GRAMERCY   PARK  AND  THE   PLAYERS  CLUB 


GRAMEECY,  STUYVESANT,  OLD  CHELSEA 


Yorker,  a  dweller  here,  who  wrote  those  preeminently 
Santa  Clausish  lines  beginning,  *  ^  'Twas  the  night  be- 
fore Christmas.'' 

In  New  York,  Santa  Claus  must  go  down  a  pipe 
in  a  kitchenette,  or  come  up  a  furnace  flue,  or  struggle 
with  hot-water  pipes,  or  be  broiled  with  steam.  It  is 
not  an  encouraging  city  for  old-time  Christmas  tradi- 
tions. It  is  not  a  place  for  stockings  by  the  fireplace. 
And  so  it  seems  astonishing  that  any  New  Yorker 
should  have  been  inspired  to  write  these  lines.  And 
then  one  remembers  that,  after  all,  it  was  in  the  house- 
living  days  of  New  York,  before  the  apartment  days, 
that  the  verses  were  written ;  although  they  are  so  gen- 
erally familiar,  and  give  so  entirely  modern  an  im- 
pression, that  one  at  first  takes  it  for  granted  that 
they  are  of  recent  origin.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  they 
were  written  by  a  man  who  lived  in  New  York  a  cen- 
tury ago.  And  he  lived  in  this  section,  to  which  even 
yet  tenements  have  not  come. 

Old  Chelsea,  once  Chelsea  Village,  still  retaining 
much  of  its  old-time  comfortable  aspect,  its  pictur- 
esqueness,  is  in  the  vicinity  of  23rd  Street  and  the 
North  River.  And  he  who  would  know  New  York 
must,  from  the  first,  know  that  the  city  is  divided,  not 
officially  but  none  the  less  surely,  into  a  great  number 
of  divisions,  such  as  Yorkville,  Poverty  Hollow,  Mur- 
ray Hill,  Hell 's  Kitchen,  Sunken  Village,  Penitentiary 
Row,  Manhattanville,  Harlem,  Battle  Row,  Corcor- 
an 's  Roost,  Greenwich  Village  and  Chelsea. 

The  author  of  the  Santa  Claus  verse  was  Clement 
C.  Moore,  son  of  Bishop  Moore,  and  he  inherited  from 

165 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


his  father  most  of  the  great  area  of  Chelsea,  and  gave, 
or  leased  forever  without  rent,  a  large  part  of  his 
possessions  to  a  theological  seminary,  which  put  up 
interesting  college  buildings  in  English  style,  and  ce- 
mented jagged  glass  on  the  tops  of  stone  walls  to  dis- 
courage trespassers — also  in  English  style! — and  on 
the  whole  gave  such  an  atmosphere  of  peace  and 
charm  as  to  make  Chelsea  quite  remindful  of  some 
pleasant  ecclesiastical  village  of  England.  Delightful 
folk  came  to  live  in  the  vicinity  of  the  college  buildings 
and  the  professors ;  and  even  yet,  in  spite  of  the  north- 
ward sweep  of  commerce  and  business,  this  section  re- 
mains an  oasis  of  charm. 

The  first  house  in  the  Chelsea  neighborhood  was 
built  by  Captain  Thomas  Clarke,  about  1750,  and  the 
name  of  Chelsea  seems  to  have  been  reminiscent  of  old 
Chelsea  by  the  Thames,  in  England.  Clarke's  house 
was  burned  when  he  was  on  his  deathbed,  and  he  was 
carried  away  from  it  to  die,  but  his  widow  bravely  re- 
built on  the  same  spot;  but  this  second  house  also 
long  ago  disappeared. 

During  the  Eevolution  the  widow  and  her  two 
daughters,  frankly  loyal  to  England,  feared  injury 
from  the  Americans  during  the  brief  time  that  the 
Continentals  held  New  York,  and  there  is  a  pretty 
story  about  General  Washington  himself  hearing  of 
this  and  riding  over  in  person,  one  day,  to  assure  the 
ladies  of  full  safety.  Indeed,  our  American  George 
could  be  a  very  courtly  gentleman  when  he  chose. 

A  vague  story  has  also  come  down  that  a  British 
frigate  which  had  been  doing  target  practice  turned 

166 


GEAMERCY,  STUYVESANT,  OLD  CHELSEA 


its  guns  toward  the  Americans  when  Washington's 
party  was  seen  and  that  a  cannon  ball  actually 
crashed  into  the  Clarke  house ;  but  this  story  seems  to 
have  no  basis  except  that  of  legendary  interest. 

The  property  passed  from  the  possession  of  the 
Clarkes  to  that  of  Bishop  Moore  about  the  year  1800, 
but  it  still  kept  its  name  of  Chelsea. 

And  not  only  was  the  son  of  the  bishop  the  author 
of  what  may  fairly  be  termed  the  classic  of  child- 
hood, but  he  was  also  author  of  so  utterly  different  a 
work,  so  absolutely  unchildlike  in  its  appeal,  as  a 
Hebrew  lexicon!  And  the  suggestion  amusingly 
comes  that  if  this  classic  of  erudition  could  be  as 
widely  known  as  the  classic  of  childhood,  converse 
would  be  easy  with  the  race  who  are  more  in  evidence 
than  any  other  of  the  many  races  of  Manhattan ! 


167 


CHAPTER  XIV 


UP  FIFTH  TO  FORTY-SECOND 

IFTH  Avenue  marches  off  su- 
perbly from  a  noble  gateway,  an 
arch  placed  like  a  gateway  at  its 
lower  end,  where  the  avenue 
leads  away  from  Washington 
Square.  It  is  a  distinguished 
arch,  an  arch  of  proportion,  of 
grace,  of  dignity,  of  beauty,  it  is 
an  arch  of  gray  stone,  and  it 
rises  effectively  from  a  sweep  of 
gray  asphalt  pavement,  with  the 
soft  greenery  of  grass  and  the 
swaying  green  of  great  old  trees  close  by,  and  it  rises 
against  a  sedate  background  of  the  mellow  red  of 
old  mansions. 

It  is  not  a  large  arch.  It  was  inspired  by  the  Arc 
de  Triomphe  of  Paris  just  as  that  had  been  inspired 
by  the  arches  of  Rome ;  indeed  this  is  far  more  like 
the  arch  of  Titus  than  like  the  Parisian  arch. 

At  each  corner  of  Fifth  Avenue,  and  facing  to- 
ward the  arch,  is  a  house  of  large  and  generous  size, 
of  ample  and  fine  proportions;  each  is  of  mellowed 
brick,  each  has  great  wistarias,  drooping  clusters 

168 


UP  FIFTH  TO  FOKTY-SECOND 


of  purple  over  its  balconies,  each  has  a  garden 
nooked  behind  a  high  brick  wall,  **a  garden  circum- 
mured  with  brick, ' '  each  has  the  smoothest  of  narrow 
lawns  and  each  is  bright  with  flowering  shrubs.  If 
houses  were  human  these  might  be  twins,  so  delight- 
fully alike  they  are  in  general  air  and  aspect. 

Fifth  Avenue  is  a  wonderful  avenue,  in  its  great 
straight  length  of  mile  on  mile,  in  its  setting  forth 
of  much  of  the  very  best  that  New  York  can  offer,  of 
people  and  homes  and  churches  and  clubs  and  hotels 
and  places  of  business  and  parks,  and  in  its  posses- 
sion of  the  finest  of  American  museums.  For  many 
years  an  avenue  of  homes,  it  now  has  as  many  busi- 
ness establishments  as  homes,  and  it  still  retains  its 
leadership  among  American  avenues. 

A  white-fronted  hotel,  foreign-looking  and  distin- 
guished, just  a  little  above  the  square,  keeps  in  mind 
the  name  of  Brevoort,  the  man  who  long  ago  owned 
acres  and  acres  of  land  hereabouts,  his  estate  extend- 
ing even  beyond  Broadway.  He  was  born  thirty 
years  before  the  Revolution  and  lived  for  thirty  years 
after  the  beginning  of  the  War  of  1812,  and  for  his 
almost  full  century  of  life  left  the  memory  of  one 
notable  achievement :  the  preventing,  by  a  bitter  legal 
fight,  of  the  cutting  of  11th  Street  through  his  prop- 
erty, from  Broadway  to  Fourth  Avenue,  his  objection 
being  that  it  would  destroy  a  favorite  tree — and 
hence  the  still  unbroken  space  immediately  adjoining 
Grace  Church  on  the  north. 

The  junction  of  Fifth  Avenue  and  9th  Street  is  of 
varied  and  unusual  interest.   At  the  south-east 

169 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


corner  is  a  rather  narrow  house,  of  three  stories  and 
a  high  basement,  a  house  of  red  brick  with  imitation 
Venetian  windows;  not  at  all  a  distinguished  house, 
yet  here  it  was  that  Mark  Twain  came,  to  spend  the 
closing  years  of  his  life. 

It  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  the  explanation 
of  his  choosing  this  home,  whence  he  could  look  out 
upon  great  currents  of  human  travel,  was  the  feeling, 
perhaps  subconscious,  that  Fifth  Avenue  itself  was  a 
sort  of  landward  Mississippi  Eiver,  here  in  the  East.  I 
remember  that  on  pleasant  spring  evenings  he  would 
stand  at  the  top  of  his  front  steps,  clad  in  the  fa- 
mous white  suit  with  which  he  won  such  attention  in 
England,  smoking  his  cigar  (inveterate  smoker  that 
he  was,  he  loved  to  say  that  he  had  made  it  a  life- 
long rule  never  to  smoke  more  than  one  cigar  at  a 
time!)  and  looking  out  thoughtfully  at  the  currents 
of  life,  of  the  passing  people  and  vehicles. 

Across  the  street,  at  the  north-east  corner,  lived 
old  General  Sickles,  long  surviving  the  war  that  had 
made  him  famous,  and  maintaining  to  the  last  his 
tulip  bed  as  if  it  were  a  battalion  holding  a  desper- 
ate position;  and  indeed  it  required  determination 
and  vigilance  to  hold  those  tulip  lines !  Bluff  old  sol- 
dier that  he  was,  his  friends  liked  to  remember  that 
when  he  had  lost  his  leg  at  Gettysburg,  and  his  faith- 
ful negro  body-servant  blubbered  about  it,  there 
came  a  curt  admonition,  with  the  words:  Don't  you 
see  you'll  only  have  one  boot  to  polish  after  this!'' 

It  gives  the  9th  Street  junction  a  still  further  inter- 
est, and  an  interest  of  fiction  instead  of  fact,  that 

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UP  FIFTH  TO  FORTY-SECOND 


the  square-fronted  house  at  the  north-west  corner 
was  the  house  of  Van  Bibber's  burglar — thus  bring- 
ing freshly  to  mind  the  memory  of  that  kindly  club- 
man, the  delightful  conception  of  the  early  career  of 
Richard  Harding  Davis. 

At  10th  Street  is  the  Church  of  the  Ascension,  built 
of  a  rough  and  reddish  stone,  and  with  a  square  tower 
rising  above  its  unpretentious  but  dignified  front.  A 
stone  pavement  is  about  it  and  there  are  privet 
bushes  of  great  size,  and  the  church  is  finely  open 
daily,  as  a  number  of  New  York  churches  are,  for 
rest,  meditation  and  prayer ;  and  at  services  the  seats 
are  free. 

Inside,  the  interest  goes  at  once  to  a  great  painting 
behind  the  altar,  a  painting  of  the  Ascension  by  John 
LaFarge,  occupying  the  entire  end  of  the  nave  and 
rising  with  curving  top  to  the  ceiling.  It  is  in  soft 
blues,  in  tawny  colorings  with  touches  of  subdued 
rose,  and  shows  some  two-score  figures  of  angels  and 
disciples  and  friends,  and  on  the  whole  is  a  notable 
thing. 

The  interior  of  the  church  is  effective.  It  is  a 
lesson  in  good  taste.  It  is  most  satisfactorily  a 
churchly  church,  in  its  Gothic  style,  and  with  its  stone 
floor,  its  stone  columns  on  either  side,  its  black  and 
ancient-looking  oak,  its  stained  glass,  already  finely 
mellowing.  As  the  organ  softly  sounds,  a  golden 
light  streams  in  through  the  yellow  glass  of  the  high 
windows  over  the  doorway,  and  you  feel,  in  that  dim 
religious  light,  as  if  you  are  infinite  miles  away  from 
the  busy  city.    This  is  a  church  by  Upjohn,  the  archi- 

171 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


tect  of  Trinity,  a  man  of  very  real  ability,  who  did  so 
much  to  give  ecclesiastical  buildings  of  distinction  to 
the  city. 

West  10th  Street,  for  the  block  between  Fifth  and 
Sixth  Avenues,  is  an  interesting  old  New  York 
street,  an  almost  romantic  street,  a  street  mainly  of 
individual  houses  instead  of  flats  or  apartments :  and 
here  still  stands  an  old-fashioned  block  of  studio 
buildings,  the  studios  of  the  *^01d  Masters"  of  New 
York,  the  studios  of  men  who  cheerfully  painted  and 
struggled  for  fame  in  the  long  ago,  and  whose  pic- 
tures now  sell  from,  say,  from  two  to  twenty  thou- 
sand dollars  each.  Here,  in  Chase's  studio,  Car- 
mencita  danced,  as  she  dances  forever  in  Sargent's 
painting  in  the  gallery  of  the  Luxembourg,  in  Paris : 
here  were  gay  and  happy  times :  but  these  *  *  Old  Mas- 
ters''  are  dead,  and  the  footsteps  of  a  new  generation 
of  artists  sound  upon  the  red-tiled  floors. 

That  these  old  studio  fronts  are  generously  broad 
is  a  chief  source  of  their  comfortable  cheerfulness  of 
aspect;  and  this  is  remindful  that  the  cause,  more 
than  any  other,  of  a  certain  meagerness,  a  cramped 
uncomfortableness,  which  mark  many  miles  of  New 
York  buildings,  is  that  some  one  discovered  how  to 
build  flats  which,  by  dividing  the  frontage  of  a  New 
York  lot,  gave  to  each  family  the  width  of  half  a  lot 
— which  was  admirable  for  land  and  building  specu- 
lators but  the  reverse  of  admirable  for  the  city's 
looks. 

At  11th  Street  and  Fifth  Avenue  is  another  Up- 
john church,  the  First  Presbyterian,  a  church  not  un- 

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UP  FIFTH  TO  FOKTY-SECOND 


like  that  of  the  Ascension,  but  with  a  broader  and 
larger  interior,  with  side  galleries  and  a  groined  roof. 
This  church  occupies  an  entire  block  and  has  there- 
fore much  of  an  air  of  spaciousness,  and  there  is  much 
of  greenery  roundabout,  and  there  is  a  privet  hedge 
behind  a  Gothic  iron  fence,  and  above  the  church 
rises  a  square  Gothic  tower.  It  is  of  rough  stone, 
dark  and  reddish,  and  has  in  its  outward  aspect  a 
little  more  of  elaborateness  of  stone  detail  than  has 
its  sister  church  on  the  corner  below. 

It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  it  was  on  the  stone 
ledge  of  the  base  of  the  iron  fence  in  front  of  this 
church  that  George  William  Curtis,  in  '  ^  Prue  and  I, ' ' 
placed  the  old  apple-woman  from  whom  the  daily 
apple  was  bought,  and  whose  basket  was  so  distress- 
ingly overturned  when  the  man  was  eagerly  gazing 
at  the  pretty  girl  passing  in  the  carriage! — for  of 
such  light  things,  with  their  sweet  and  wholesome 
flavor,  was  the  literature  of  half  and  three-quarters 
of  a  century  ago  made ! 

On  past  14th  Street,  with  towering  business  blocks 
on  either  side.  Fifth  Avenue  marches,  and  straight  as 
an  arrow  through  Madison  Square,  here  crossing 
Broadway  and  aiming  directly  on  to  a  far-distant 
northward. 

At  East  29th  Street  one's  eyes  are  drawn  aside  by 
the  greenery  and  charm  of  the  Little  Church  Around 
the  Corner,  so  interesting  in  its  name  and  its  appear- 
ance and  its  setting,  so  delightfully  unexpected  as  a 
bit  of  downtown  New  York  landscape,  so  associated 
with  fiction  that  seems  as  real  as  fact  and  with  fact 

173 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


that  has  all  the  interest  of  fiction.  It  is  but  half  a 
block  from  the  avenue. 

The  marriages  that  have  taken  place  at  what  was 
so  long  looked  upon  as  New  York^s  Gretna  Green 
represent  romance  illimitable;  and  one  thinks  first 
of  the  delightful  marriage  at  which  the  always  lika- 
ble Van  Bibber  was  the  deus  ex  macliina,  while  he 
sent  the  angry  brother  off  on  a  wildgoose  chase  to 
Chicago — and  afterwards  was  mildly  sorry  that  he 
had  made  it  farther  than  Jersey  City. 

Weddings  at  all  hours  so  established  the  pleasant 
fame  of  this  church  that  funerals  seem  almost  incon- 
gruous ;  and  yet  it  was  a  funeral  through  which  the 
fame  of  this  church  of  marriages  began,  the  funeral 
of  George  Holland;  nor  can  one  forget  that  grim  lit- 
tle story  of  Brander  Matthews'  in  which  he  tells  of 
the  funeral  of  an  actor,  while  the  woman  he  was  to 
have  married  sat  unnoticed  by  the  door  in  the  most 
hopeless  of  all  agony ;  and  perhaps  that  story  came  to 
him  from  noticing  how  like  the  drop  scene  of  a  theater 
this  church  appears,  in  its  long  stretched-out  but 
shallow  surroundings.  The  long  nave  of  the  church 
is  even  parallel  with  the  sidewalk,  as  if  in  an  effort 
to  accentuate  the  drop  scene  effect. 

The  formal  name,  if  one  must  have  formality,  is 
the  Church  of  the  Transfiguration,  but  its  name  of 
the  Little  Church  Around  the  Corner  is  that  by  which 
it  is  always  lovingly  known. 

George  Holland,  an  actor  of  useful  career  and 
unblemished  character,''  to  use  the  words  of  Joseph 
Jefferson,  his  close  friend,  died  at  the  age  of  eighty, 

174 


UP  FIFTH  TO  FOETY-SECOND 


and  Jefferson,  accompanied  by  Holland's  son,  went 
to  the  minister  of  the  church  on  Fifth  Avenue  that 
was  attended  by  Holland's  sister,  to  arrange  for  the 
funeral. 

The  minister  named  the  time;  but  then,  learning 
from  a  remark  dropped  by  Jefferson  that  Holland 
had  been  an  actor,  he  absolutely  declined  to  have  the 
service  at  his  church ! 

Jefferson  was  frankly  shocked  by  this  refusal, 
whereupon  the  minister  carelessly  remarked  that 
^Hhere  was  a  little  church  around  the  corner  where 
you  might  get  it  done. ' '  *  ^  Might  get  it  done ! ' '  We 
have  Jefferson's  own  statement  that  those  were  the 
minister's  words. 

And  Jefferson,  fine  man  as  well  as  fine  actor  that 
he  was,  was  equal  to  the  occasion.  *^If  this  be  so, 
then  God  bless  the  Little  Church  Around  the  Cor- 
ner ! "  he  said,  thus  giving  the  church  its  lovable  name 
by  the  swift  adoption  of  the  minister's  flippantly 
meant  phrase.  Thus  christened,  the  name  was  affec- 
tionately seized  upon  by  Jefferson's  friends  and  by 
the  public.  No  church  in  the  world  has  been  more 
fondly  referred  to. 

From  Holland's  funeral  there  have  come  to  be  a 
long,  long  line,  not  only  of  funerals  but  in  particular 
of  weddings,  and  its  reputation  long  ago  made  it  the 
most  romantic  pilgrimage  spot  in  New  York. 

The  ivy-clad  little  crowded  clump  of  buildings  nes- 
tles oddly  away  among  the  tall  business  structures 
closely  surrounding  it.  It  is  of  brick,  with  sharp- 
pointed  gables.    Its  center  square  tower,  prettily  vil- 

175 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


lage-like,  runs  up  to  a  cross-tipped  and  pyramidal 
roof.  The  church  buildings  are  very  low  set,  almost 
as  if  seeking  seclusion  behind  the  hedge  that  borders 
the  sidewalk.  All  is  pleasantly  Gothic  in  design. 
The  windows  are  narrow  and  lancet  like.  The  in- 
terior of  the  church  is  longer  than  would  be  expected 
from  the  outside;  it  is  dusky  and  low,  with  almost 
the  impression  of  the  roof  being  close  upon  you. 

Outside  there  are  grass  and  shrubs  within  the  nar- 
row little  space  and  even  some  trees !  And  there  is, 
of  all  things  for  central  New  York,  a  lych-gate,  which 
gives  an  air  as  of  peacefully  setting  the  church  apart 
from  the  street. 

Business  long  ago  invaded  Fifth  Avenue,  but  now 
it  has  conquered  great  sections  from  down  near  its 
beginning  to  far  up  toward  Central  Park.  Nor  are 
the  businesses  of  the  kind  which  first  appeared  here 
on  this  avenue,  so  long  exclusive.  At  first  they  were 
expensive  establishments  for  the  sale  of  jewelry  and 
furs,  hats  and  flowers,  china,  costumes,  paintings,  en- 
gravings; and  there  were  expensive  hotels  and  res- 
taurants of  world-wide  fame.  And  these  are  still 
here ;  the  most  expensive  and  exclusive  of  shops,  and 
the  most  exclusive  of  dining  places :  but  there  is  also 
now  an  admixture  of  shops  that  sell  poorer  and 
cheaper  things,  and  of  restaurants  that  are  neither 
expensive  nor  fashionable. 

Most  of  all,  a  change  has  come  through  the  mass- 
ing in  this  vicinity  of  garment  makers,  who  have  rec- 
ognized the  importance  of  a  Fifth  Avenue,  or  near 
Fifth  Avenue,  address,  as  a  business  asset,  and  have 

176 


UP  FIFTH  TO  FORTY-SECOND 


j 


therefore  moved  into  this  region.  At  the  noon  hour, 
now,  the  sidewalks  of  a  great  part  of  the  avenue, 
below  34th  Street,  are  packed,  for  blocks,  solid  with 
foreign-faced  garment  workers;  all  men,  all  quiet 
and  orderly,  almost  all  dressed  in  black,  and  all 
standing  here  or  softly  shuffling  about  getting  a  little 
sun  and  air  before  returning  to  take  up  the  after- 
noon's work.  These  men,  who  swarm  so  thickly  on 
weekdays,  vanish  as  evening  comes,  and  on  Sundays 
are  not  in  evidence  at  all. 

And  on  Sunday  mornings  Americans  come  back 
here!  You  see  again  the  American  faces  that  you 
thought  had  disappeared  from  the  New  York  side- 
walks! And  you  see  Americans  without  foreigners. 
And  not  merely  in  the  motor-cars;  as  a  matter  of 
fact  the  motors  on  Sunday  are  largely  from  New  Jer- 
sey, over  for  a  safe  city  spin,  or  even  from  Connecti- 
cut ;  but  the  sidewalks  from,  say,  34th  Street  to  Cen- 
tral Park  are  thronged  with  Americans. 

The  high  silk  hat,  too,  polished  to  dazzling  bright- 
ness, glowing,  resplendent,  is  again  brought  out  from 
the  hiding  place  into  which  for  the  rest  of  the  week 
it  is  thrust,  and  goes  proudly  along  as  of  old.  And 
under  the  silk  hats  you  may  pick  out  the  face  of  this 
or  that  well-known  New  Yorker,  this  or  that  busi- 
ness man  or  lawyer.  There  are  New  Yorkers  who 
know  each  other !  You  see  them  bowing  and  smiling 
at  each  other  in  greeting.  This  is  not  the  case  on 
other  days  of  the  week,  for  in  general  New  Yorkers 
are  strangers  to  those  who  pass  them  by. 

One  day  I  saw  twenty-five  thousand  strikers,  mostly 

177 


i 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


garment  workers,  marching  up  Fifth  Avenue. 
There  was  not  an  American  face  in  the  entire  twenty- 
five  thousand.  It  was  an  object  lesson  as  to  whose 
are  the  hands  into  which  we  are  throwing  the  con- 
trol of  our  country.  The  faces  wore  an  expression 
of  triumphant  sullenness.  It  was  as  if  they  were 
warning  Americans — as  in  very  truth  they  were. 
And  the  crowds  massed  to  watch  them  were  mainly 
composed  of  men  and  women  and  children  of  their 
own  class,  immediate  friends  and  sympathizers. 
And  I  noticed  that  with  the  marchers  and  spectators 
alike,  the  average  physical  size  was  quite  beneath 
that  of  American  citizens  of  the  times  now  vanish- 
ing. The  entire  throng  were  frankly  undersized,  so 
markedly  that  any  one  reaching  an  average  Ameri- 
can height  was  noticeable. 

And  not  only  were  they  undersized,  not  only  were 
there  no  American  faces,  but  the  tunes  to  which  they 
marched — for  they  had  a  number  of  bands — were 
not  only  not  American  but  were  almost  all  of  revolu- 
tionary tendency.  There  was  no  Irishman  marching 
— but  **The  Wearing  of  the  Green*'  was  a  favorite 
tune.  There  was  not  a  single  Frenchman — but  far 
more  than  any  other  tune  the  bands  vied  with  each 
other  in  the  Marseillaise.'' 

Unexpectedly  and  very  pleasantly,  in  much  of  New 
York,  and  notably  on  Fifth  Avenue,  one  sees  flowers 
and  greenery  and  vines  in  front  of  the  shops,  in  lines 
along  the  sidewalks,  in  rows  above  the  front-doors, 
in  dots,  in  singles,  in  pots,  even  in  hedges,  giving  in 
all  a  pleasurable  sense  of  sweetness  and  color;  quite 

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UP  FIFTH  TO  FOETY-SECOND 


Parisian,  I  was  going  to  say,  only  in  this  regard  really 
better  than  with  the  shops  of  Paris;  more  like  the 
greenery  showing  on  the  shop-fronts  of  London. 

And  to  add  to  the  homelikeness  that  still  lingers, 
with  the  wealthy  homes,  there  is  often  an  unexpected 
bit  of  greenery  over  a  wall,  and  even  now  and  then 
the  homely  touch  of  a  clothesline  full  of  clothes. 

The  big  hotel  at  34th  Street,  the  Waldorf-Astoria, 
which  has  probably  been  more  talked  about  than  any 
other  hotel  in  the  world,  is  still  a  place  where,  if  you 
will  but  sit  down  in  the  lobby,  your  friends  from  any 
corner  of  the  world  will  in  time  appear.  For  every- 
body still  seems  to  drift  in  here,  even  if  but  to  see 
and  be  seen,  even  though  fickle  New  York  never  keeps 
any  hotel  on  an  exclusive  pinnacle,  but  is  always 
reaching  out  for  something  new  and  more  expensive 
— and  with  hotels,  as  with  everything  else,  the  new 
and  more  expensive  is  always  given  when  looked  for ! 
And  the  greatest  hotels  rival  one  another  in  vast 
number  of  rooms  and  vast  number  of  guests  and  vast 
number  of  servants;  the  figures  offered  seem  like 
fantastic  dreams  of  incredible  quantities.  And  with 
all  this  and  in  spite  of  all  this,  there  have  been  times 
in  recent  years,  when  every  hotel  in  Manhattan  was 
literally  full  and  when  those  who  could  not  find  room 
had  to  go  to  sleep,  not  merely  over  to  Brooklyn,  but 
to  towns  in  New  Jersey;  even  Philadelphia  claims 
part  of  this  overflow  of  visitors,  who  would  take  an 
early  train  to  New  York  each  morning  and  return 
each  night. 

Biggest  of  all  the  New  York  hotels — until  some  new 

179 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


one  shall  outdo  it ! — ^will  be  that  of  the  Pennsylvania 
Railroad,  put  up  opposite  its  station  by  the  railroad 
itself  because  of  the  hesitation  of  outside  capital  as 
to  buying  a  hotel  site  beneath  which  is  a  tunnel 
through  which  trains  are  forever  to  go:  and  this 
hotel,  with  its  two  thousand  rooms  and  a  private  bath 
for  every  room,  is  not  only  to  lead  New  York  but, 
of  course,  the  entire  world. 

The  big  brown  hotel  at  34th  Street,  with  its  tea 
rooms,  its  Peacock  Row,"  its  permeative  touch  of 
wellrgowned  femininity,  has  been  the  main  influence 
in  bringing  about  an  interesting  change.  For  it  used 
to  be  that  a  woman  at  a  hotel  was  condemned  to  se- 
clusion and  monotony.  Only  a  few  years  ago,  the 
Ladies'  Parlor,"  on  the  second  floor  of  all  hotels, 
was  a  thing  of  gloom  and  dread.  It  was  stern  and 
solemn  and  severe.  It  was  scant  of  light  and  air. 
Its  atmosphere  was  hushed.  Its  voices  were  always 
low.  Its  furniture  was  soberly  upholstered.  No  chair 
was  ever  to  be  moved.  To  go  to  a  hotel  was,  for  a 
woman,  matter  for  penitence.  She  was  a  flower  to 
blush  unseen.  But  now  it  is  understood  that  there 
must  be  brightness  and  music  and  gayety  and  lights 
for  women  as  well  as  for  men :  and  already  this  fact 
is  as  generally  recognized  as  if  it  had  always  been 
self-evident.  Nowadays,  the  revel  of  woman's 
beauty,  the  glitter  of  woman's  gems,  the  sheen  and 
glimmer  of  charming  fashions,  are  openly  a  pleasure 
to  the  eye,  in  any  good  hotel. 

Busy  and  thronging  with  life  is  the  Avenue  at  34th 
Street,  but  even  more  thronging,  more  full  of  the 

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UP  FIFTH  TO  FORTY-SECOND 


splendor  of  life,  is  the  corner  of  42d  Street,  which 
seems,  on  the  whole,  to  mark  the  crest  of  present-day 
New  York  life. 

It  is  a  wonderful  sight  that  one  sees,  on  a  pleasant 
sunny  day,  from  the  terrace  in  front  of  the  great 
library  building  at  this  corner.  Four  mighty 
streams  of  traffic,  east  and  west  on  42d  Street  and 
north  and  south  on  Fifth  Avenue  converge  and  meet 
and  pass  here.  Within  the  ten  busiest  hours  of  the 
day  there  pass  this  corner,  so  say  those  whose  busi- 
ness it  has  been  to  count,  18,800  vehicles,  the  great 
majority  being  motor  vehicles,  and  113,780  pedestri- 
ans: making  an  average  of  one  vehicle  every  two 
seconds  and  of  three  pedestrians  a  second:  but  fig- 
ures even  such  as  these  seem  small  when  compared 
with  the  immense  sight  of  the  immense  traffic  itself, 
moving  on  in  orderly  lines;  and  from  time  to  time 
halted,  in  a  few  moments,  into  lines  of  motor-cars 
stretching  up  and  down  the  avenue  for  blocks. 

And  it  is  not  merely  the  mass,  the  numbers,  the 
movement,  the  busy  life  of  the  scene;  it  is  opulence 
and  glitter,  it  is  splendor  and  beauty  and  wealth. 
One  does  not  on  this  corner  think  of  the  tenements  or 
poverty!  On  this  corner  it  would  seem  even  more 
absurd  than  on  Wall  Street  to  remember  that  the 
entire  island  of  Manhattan  was  purchased  from  the 
Indians  for  some  beads  and  ribbons  of  the  value  of 
twenty-four  dollars !  The  golden  sunlight  glows  and 
glitters  on  a  golden  street.  The  very  heart  of  the 
proud  city  is  seen.  *^That  great  city,  that  was 
clothed  in  fine  linen,  and  purple,  and  scarlet,  and 

181 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


decked  with  gold,  and  precious  stones,  and 
pearls 

Here  at  42d  and  Fifth,  there  was  built,  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  last  century,  a  building  which,  though  it 
burned  down  shortly  after  its  erection,  is  still  remem- 
bered, as  a  memorable  thing,  by  this  city  which  so 
readily  forgets.  For  it  was  the  Crystal  Palace.  It 
stood  not  precisely  at  the  corner,  but  on  the  space 
behind  the  present  library  building,  and  it  was 
deemed  one  of  the  wonders  of  the  world:  and  this, 
and  its  being  still  kept  in  memory,  was  much  more 
from  its  having  contained  thirty-nine  thousand 
square  feet  of  glass  than  because  it  was  built  as  a 
great  exposition  building  or  because  it  displayed, 
among  many  other  things,  the  first  important  collec- 
tion of  painting  and  sculpture  ever  seen  in  the  United 
States. 

Paintings,  and  particularly  those  by  famous  art- 
ists, have  become  one  of  the  extravagant  items  of 
New  York  life;  this  line  of  expensiveness  has  devel- 
oped within  the  last  hundred  years,  although  even  a 
century  ago  there  were  sums  paid  that  were  quite 
high  for  that  period.  In  1811  a  certain  Michael  Paff 
opened  a  gallery  at  208  Broadway  for  the  exhibition 
of  *^a  collection  of  original  paintings,''  and  there  he 
exhibited  what,  whether  originals  or  not,  would  now 
be  deemed  priceless  examples  of  Teniers,  Eubens, 
Vandyck  and  Wouvermans.  I  do  not  know  what 
prices  he  obtained  for  most  of  his  pictures,  but  a 
Wouvermans  was  offered  for  $2,000.  Paff  an- 
nounced that  he  had  been  upwards  of  ten  years  col- 

182 


UP  FIFTH  TO  FORTY-SECOND 


lecting  his  pictures  **and  fitting  them  up  in  superior 
style.''  Likely  enough,  some  of  his  paintings  are 
now  in  the  Metropolitan  Museum  or  in  prized  pri- 
vate possession,  and  one  can  only  hope  that  his  om- 
inous phrase  of  fitting  them  up''  meant  nothing 
serious. 

At  the  corner  of  42nd  Street  stands  the  Public 
Library;  a  great  and  noble  building,  occupying  the 
space  from  42nd  to  40th  Streets,  and  fronting  Fifth 
Avenue  with  splendid  pillared  and  terraced  effective- 
ness, and  with  tall  Venetian  masts  set  charmingly  in 
front.  A  building,  this,  which  would  be  an  honor  to 
any  country  or  any  time ;  and,  as  it  is  always  the  case 
that  in  New  York  the  cost  of  anything  is  held  im- 
portant, it  may  be  said  that  the  great  and  beautiful 
structure  cost,  exclusive  of  the  cost  of  the  land,  nine 
millions  of  dollars.  But  it  is  more  important  to  say 
that  the  building  holds  more  than  eight  hundred 
thousand  volumes,  and  innumerable  manuscripts,  in 
addition  to  the  vast  number  of  volumes  contained  in 
its  many  branch  libraries  scattered  throughout  the 
city. 

Within,  the  atmosphere  is  of  restful  studiousness, 
and  the  great  central  reading  room,  the  impressive 
length  of  corridors,  the  admirable  service,  the  rows 
on  rows  of  books,  the  galleries  of  prints  and  engrav- 
ings and  paintings,  unite  to  make  it  notable  among 
the  libraries  of  the  world;  a  noble  building,  nobly 
used. 

Its  picture  gallery  is  comparatively  little  known, 
but,  though  not  large,  it  contains  some  extremely 

183 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


interesting  examples,  and  especially  of  American 
artists. 

Here  is  that  Washington,  by  Gilbert  Stuart,  which 
was  the  proud  possession  of  Alexander  Hamilton:  a 
Washington  holding  a  scroll  and  a  sword,  with  a 
background  of  the  sea  and  ships:  a  highly  dignified 
Washington  of  lace  ruffles  and  black  velvet — and  it 
is  pleasant  to  remember  somebody's  felicitous  com- 
ment that  it  was  fortunate  that  in  Washington's  time 
a  painter  existed  who  was  able  to  hand  him  down 
to  posterity  as  the  fine  gentleman  that  he  was. 

There  are  in  existence  a  number  of  Gilbert  Stu- 
art's Washingtons.  Stuart  had  painted  abroad, 
among  many  notables,  George  the  Third  and  the 
prince  who  later  became  George  the  Fourth,  but  he 
gave  up  his  English  career  for  the  purpose  of  coming 
back  to  America  to  paint  a  far  greater  George  than 
either  of  those  royal  ones ;  and  this  Washington,  here 
in  the  library,  is  believed  to  have  been  a  gift  to  Ham- 
ilton from  Washington  himself.  And  one  likes  to 
remember  that  quaintly  wise  and  quaintly  humorous 
declaration  by  Mark  Twain,  that  if  George  Washing- 
ton should  rise  from  the  dead  and  should  not  resem- 
ble the  portraits  by  Stuart,  he  would  be  denounced 
as  an  impostor ! 

Two  other  of  the  interesting  portraits  are  by  an 
exceptionally  famous  New  Yorker  who  was  not  at  all 
famous  as  a  painter,  S.  F.  B.  Morse.  He  studied  un- 
der the  great  Benjamin  West  in  England,  and  came 
back  to  America  determined  to  win  fame  as  a  painter 
of  portraits.    And  he  had  excellent  sitters  and  made 

184 


UP  FIFTH  TO  FORTY-SECOND 

numerous  pictures.  And  then  he  made  one  of  the 
most  amazing  of  changes ;  for  he  quitted  art  and  in- 
vented the  telegraph.  And  it  is  recorded  that  this 
New  Yorker  (he  was  not  born  here,  but,  typical  New 
Yorker  that  he  was,  came  here  to  live  and  become 
famous)  received  more  medals  and  honors  and  deco- 
rations from  foreign  governments  than  were  ever 
given  to  any  other  American. 

Here  is  Morse's  portrait  of  Fitz-Greene  Halleck, 
and  it  is  interesting  to  see  what  the  famous  New 
York  poet  looked  like,  in  the  eyes  of  the  inventor 
of  the  telegraph,  for  Halleck  wears  a  snuff-colored 
coat  with  a  high  velvet  collar,  he  is  a  ruddy-faced, 
black-haired  man  of  perhaps  forty,  and  he  smiles  a 
little  fatuously  from  the  canvas. 

Here,  too,  is  Morse 's  portrait  of  Lafayette,  painted 
when  the  distinguished  Frenchman  was  in  America 
in  1825.  It  is  an  excellent  bit  of  work,  presenting 
Lafayette  as  a  great-eyed,  long-nosed,  long-faced, 
highly  likable  man,  with  high-set  eyebrows  and  nar- 
rowish  forehead,  with  choker  collar  and  ruffled  shirt, 
dressed  in  black,  with  a  dark  red  cloak.  The  por- 
trait is  an  example  of  how  one's  private  griefs  must 
often  be  submerged  in  one's  work:  for  Morse's  wife 
was  taken  ill  in  New  Haven  when  this  portrait  was 
but  half  done,  and  he  hurried  to  her  bedside,  and  she 
died,  and  then  he  returned  to  the  completion  of  this 
painting. 

It  was  in  1837,  when  Morse  had  rooms  in  the 
picturesque  University  Buildings,  on  Washington 
Square,  that  he  completed  his  telegraphic  invention, 

185 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


and  the  monument  which  stands  in  Central  Park  can 
not  be  said  to  have  been  set  up  *4n  his  memory/' 
for  he  was  given  the  unusual  honor  of  having  the 
statue  made  and  set  up  while  he  was  still  alive. 

He  and  Franklin,  both  Americans,  had  subjugated 
electricity,  and  so,  when  in  1872  a  statue  to  Franklin 
was  to  be  unveiled  in  Printing  House  Square,  Morse 
was  invited  to  be  the  unveiler.  He  accepted;  but  it 
was  a  bitter  January  day,  and  he  was  in  his  eighty- 
first  year,  and  the  doing  honor  to  his  mighty  prede- 
cessor caused  his  death  from  the  cold  and  exposure. 


186 


CHAPTER  XV 


ABOVE  FORTY-SECOND 


■^'^EW  YOEK  is  a  clubable 
city.  Every  New  Yorker 
is  supposed  to  belong  to  at 
k  least  one  club.  Many  be- 
^  long  to  many  clubs. 
Some  join  so  many  clubs 
as  to  seem  to  be  trying  to 
make  a  collection  of  clubs. 


Fifth  Avenue  gives  the 
impression  of  having  a 
great  proportion  of  the 


clubs:  and  it  does  really  have  some  of  the  best  or 
most  interesting,  from  the  Salmagundi,  with  its  new 
home  far  down  toward  Washington  Arch,  to  the 

Millionaires'  Club,"  the  Metropolitan,  opposite 
lower  Central  Park. 

The  most  interesting  of  New  York  clubs  have  some 
special  tang  or  atmosphere  or  character,  from  their 
representing  the  fine  fleur  of  art  or  the  stage  or  sci- 
ence or  literature;  and  in  this  they  follow  the  ex- 
ample of  the  early  clubs  of  the  city. 

The  first  New  York  club  that  was  worthy  the  name 
of  a  club  was  the  Friendly  Club,  organized  shortly 


187 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 

before  the  Kevolution.  That  Washington,  when  he 
lived  in  New  York,  liked  to  visit  its  rooms,  would 
alone  be  sufficient  to  mark  it  as  a  club  most  highly- 
worth  while,  and  it  had  among  its  members  such  in- 
teresting men  as  Charles  Brockden  Brown,  who  cut 
such  a  figure  over  a  century  ago  only  to  become  en- 
tirely forgotten,  and  the  still  famous  James  Kent, 
Kent  of  the  Commentaries,  one  of  the  great  lawyers, 
great  judges,  great  legal  writers  of  the  English-speak- 
ing world;  and  it  would  be  curious,  were  it  not,  for 
New  York,  so  entirely  typical,  that  he  is  not  thought 
of  as  a  New  Yorker  by  this  city  where  his  fame  was 
won!  Had  he  lived  in,  let  us  say,  Boston,  and  had 
done  such  permanent  work,  you  would  keep  running 
against  his  statue,  you  would  constantly  keep  reading 
about  him,  you  would  not  be  permitted  to  forget  that 
he  was  a  Bostonian.  But  while  he  was  alive.  New 
York  honored  him,  and  when  he  died  his  funeral  was 
attended  by  an  immense  throng,  and  flags  hung  at  half 
mast  all  over  the  city  and  even  on  many  ships  in  the 
harbor. 

The  second  club  of  importance  was  the  Bread  and 
Cheese,  founded  in  1824:  and  that  the  club  was 
founded  by  James  Fenimore  Cooper  and  had  among 
its  members  such  men  as  William  Cullen  Bryant  and 
Fitz-Greene  Halleck  made  it  a  club  with  typical  New 
York  tang.  Bread  and  cheese  were  used  in  balloting 
for  membership,  bread  meaning  the  affirmative  and 
cheese  the  negative.  Cooper  himself  has  never  been 
considered  a  New  Yorker,  because  he  betook  himself 
to  Cooperstown,  and  identified  himself  with  that 

188 


ABOVE  FORTY-SECOND 


place,  and  died  there ;  but  he  had  so  much  to  do  with 
New  York,  and  was  here  so  long  and  so  often,  that 
any  other  city  than  this  great  indifferent  city  would 
be  busily  engaged  in  claiming  him.  But  at  the  time 
of  his  death  New  York  remembered  him  long  enough 
to  hold  two  special  meetings  to  honor  his  memory: 
Washington  Irving  presided  at  the  first,  and  Daniel 
Webster,  with  Irving  sitting  at  his  right,  presided  at 
the  second.  Even  then,  New  York  events  were  metro- 
politanly  planned. 

That  an  author  may  not  require,  absolutely,  that  his 
surroundings  fit  his  book,  was  shown  by  the  fact  that 
Cooper  wrote  the  greater  part  of  **The  Prairie," 
which  in  point  of  sequence  closes  the  Leather  Stock- 
ing series,  at  345  Greenwich  Street,  in  this  city,  and 
finished  it  in  France ! — not  writing  the  opening  book 
of  the  series,  *'The  Deerslayer,"  until  fifteen  years 
afterwards  at  Cooperstown.  And  one  of  the  most 
curious  of  all  literary  sayings  was  that  of  the  mighty 
Balzac  who  declared  that,  Undoubtedly  Cooper's  re- 
nown is  not  due  to  his  countrymen  or  to  the  English : 
he  owes  it  mainly  to  the  ardent  appreciation  of  the 
French.'' 

Of  the  present  day  clubs,  the  Union  Club  is  the  old- 
est, dating  back  as  it  does  to  1836 :  its  club  house  has 
gone  naturally  more  and  more  northward,  from  one 
location  to  another,  for  the  clubs  of  New  York  share 
to  the  full  in  the  restless  city's  restlessness  and 
change. 

The  Lotos,  until  its  recent  removal  to  West  57th 
Street,  was  among  the  noted  Fifth  Avenue  clubs,  and 

189 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


it  was  on  Fifth  Avenue  that  it  won  its  proud  record 
for  entertaining  distinguished  men.  As  General 
Horace  Porter  pleasantly  said  at  a  dinner  in  his  honor, 
realize  that  not  to  be  dined  by  the  Lotos  Club 
would  cause  in  life  the  feeling  of  failure  and  regret/* 

The  University,  in  its  splendid  home  at  the  corner 
of  West  54th  Street,  is  one  of  the  important  Fifth 
Avenue  clubs:  for  it  is  really  a  Fifth  Avenue  club 
even  though  the  entrance  to  its  club  house  is  on  the 
cross-street.  The  Century,  too,  whose  members  must 
be  men  who  have  achieved  high  personal  distinction, 
is  a  Fifth  Avenue  club,  although  its  club  house  is  just 
away  from  the  avenue,  at  7  West  43d  Street. 

Immediately  north  of  42nd  Street,  in  the  streets  in 
the  first  Forties,  to  the  right  and  to  the  left  of  Fifth 
Avenue,  have  gathered  many  of  the  fascinating  shops 
of  the  city:  not  the  greatest  establishments,  but  the 
shops  for  specialties,  the  shops  for  embroideries, 
table-fittings,  hangings,  ivories,  books,  the  shops  of 
decorators  and  of  purveyors  of  what  may  be  termed 
small  works  of  art,  and  the  shops  are  remindful  of 
the  delightful  specialty  shops  of  Paris. 

At  the  corner  of  the  avenue  and  48th  Street  stands 
the  Church  in  the  Fort."  Conforming  to  full  for- 
mality, it  is  known  as  the  Collegiate  Dutch  Reformed 
Church,  but  it  is  really  the  principal  of  the  lineal  de- 
scendants of  the  little  church  which,  in  the  long,  long 
ago,  stood  within  the  stockade  of  the  little  fort  which 
the  Dutch  set  up  in  what  is  now  Battery  Park.  It  is 
claimed — for  when  New  York  forgets  itself  and  really 
claims  something  of  the  past  the  claim  is  sure  to  be 

190 


ABOVE  FORTY-SECOND 


well  worth  while ! — it  is  claimed  that  this  church  is  the 
descendant  of  what  was  not  only  the  very  first  Prot- 
estant church  organization  of  New  York,  but  the  old- 
est Protestant  church  organization  in  the  Western 
hemisphere.  The  bell  which  hangs  in  the  steeple  of 
this  Fifth  Avenue  church  is  not  so  old  as  the  original 
church  in  the  Fort,  but  was  cast  in  Amsterdam,  almost 
two  hundred  years  ago,  in  1728. 

Tradition  still  tells — and  is  confirmed  pictorially,  so 
far  as  early  pictures  show — that  the  ancient  Church 
in  the  Fort  had  a  shingle  roof  and  a  wooden  tower,  a 
bell,  but  no  clock,  and  a  sundial.  At  one  time  in  its 
history  there  were  three  kinds  of  service  held  within 
its  wooden  walls,  for  the  Dutch  held  their  meetings  in 
the  forenoon,  the  French  at  noon,  and  the  Church  of 
England  in  the  afternoon.  And  the  three  services 
were  conducted  in  the  three  languages.  In  the  time  of 
Governor  Dongan  there  was  also  a  Roman  Catholic 
service,  not  in  the  Fort  Church  itself  but  in  a  little 
chapel  close  beside  it.  And  so  this  modern  church  at 
48th  Street  brings  up  very  old-time  matters  indeed. 

Occupying  the  block  between  50th  and  51st  Streets 
is  the  Roman  Catholic  Cathedral  of  St.  Patrick,  bright 
and  clean,  as  if  new  built,  although  it  was  put  up  half  a 
century  ago,  James  Renwick  being  the  architect;  a 
building  antedating  its  surroundings  but  looking  as 
new  as  any  of  them.  The  cornerstone  was  laid  as 
long  ago  as  1858,  in  the  presence  of  more  than  a  hun- 
dred thousand  people,  who  were  massed  upon  the  va- 
cant lots  around  about. 

With  its  twin  gray  spires,  it  is  a  finely  impressive 

191 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


building,  standing  just  above  the  level  of  the  side- 
walk ;  an  excellent  building,  a  successful  and  pleasant 
building,  really  a  most  admirable  building.  Some- 
how, a  much  greater  sense  of  spaciousness  has  been 
secured,  by  its  being  on  a  terrace  and  by  the  treatment 
of  the  terrace,  than  could  have  been  expected  for  such 
a  great  building  in  a  single  narrow  block,  and  there  is 
an  undoubted  effect  of  freedom  and  of  airiness. 

It  is  thirteenth  century  Gothic  in  design,  and  even 
for  those  who  know  the  magnificent  cathedrals  of  Eng- 
land and  France  there  is  much  of  the  extremely  satis- 
factory about  it.  In  its  interior  it  is  large  and  long 
and  lofty,  and  its  pillars,  its  clustered  shafts  of  stone, 
are  fine  and  dignified. 

At  53d  Street  is  another  church  edifice  in  Gothic 
style ;  the  best  example  of  Gothic  construction  of  the 
present  day,  designed  by  a  profound  lover  of  the 
Gothic,  the  Bostonian  architect  Cram.  It  is  the  Epis- 
copal Church  of  St.  Thomas,  and  represent",  more 
than  does  any  other,  combined  wealth  and  social  po- 
sition. It  has  much  of  the  charming,  much  of  strength 
and  delicacy,  but  its  lack  of  space,  its  being  built  in 
too  tightly,  is  a  drawback. 

At  59th  Street  we  come  to  the  Plaza,  at  the  south- 
east corner  of  Central  Park;  the  main  approach  to 
the  park,  overlooked  by  towering  hotels ;  and  with  its 
oncewhile  great  open  space  now  mostly  occupied  by 
an  expanse  of  stone  fountain,  finely  designed. 

Directly  in  front  is  General  Sherman  by  St.  Gaud- 
ens,  riding  finely  out  from  among  elm  trees ;  he  is  all 
in  gilded  bronze,  on  a  gilded  horse,  and  a  gilded  Vic- 

192 


ABOVE  FOKTY-SECOND 


tory  floats  ahead  of  him  at  the  horse's  bridle;  all  is 
on  a  pedestal  of  dull  red  granite  and  the  entire  monu- 
ment is  superbly  done ;  although  I  think  that  Sherman 
himself,  or  any  other  good  soldier,  would  have  ob- 
jected to  any  woman,  even  Victory,  running  into  a 
battle  in  front  of  him. 

Business,  which  has  been  alternating  with  homes 
for  many  blocks  past,  has  ceased,  for  the  present,  to 
push  farther  north  along  the  avenue  than  the  Plaza, 
so  that  from  this  point  onward  it  is  still  an  avenue  of 
homes,  facing  into  Central  Park ;  but  even  up  in  this 
northerly  region  the  homes  are  no  longer,  all  of  them, 
single  dwellings,  for  apartments  have  begun  to  make 
their  appearance  in  this  section  above  59th  Street. 
And  it  is  not  an  unmixed  evil  that  apartment  houses 
are  rapidly  replacing  individual  homes  even  in  such 
neighborhoods  as  those  bordering  Central  Park  and 
Eiverside,  for  under  the  new  system  a  far  greater 
number  of  people  will  be  able  to  enjoy  the  air  and 
the  view  and  the  openness  of  life,  and  by  so  much  there 
will  be  more  of  health  and  of  happiness.  And  it  may 
fairly  be  supposed  that  there  will  be  something  of 
what  is  known  as  exclusiveness  when  it  is  understood 
that  there  are  apartments  in  these  favored  regions 
renting  for  as  much  as  twenty  or  thirty  thousand  dol- 
lars a  year. 

In  a  general  way  this  upper  part  of  Fifth  Avenue 
for  some  blocks  north  and  some  blocks  south  of  59th 
Street,  as  to  the  homes  of  the  avenue  itself  and  those 
close  by  on  the  cross  streets,  has  come  to  stand  in 
the  public  mind  for  the  richest  of  New  Yorkers,  for 

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THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


the  greatest  of  wealth  and  social  power.  With  the 
permeative  butlers  and  chauffeurs,  with  every  symp- 
tom of  costly  living,  with  its  air  of  orderly  peaceful- 
ness  and  of  holding  aloof  from  the  ordinary  problems 
of  ordinary  mankind,  it  is  the  district  which  seems  to 
be  the  most  absolutely  differentiated  from  those  hum- 
ble sections  of  the  city  where  crime  is  understood  most 
to  flourish,  and  degeneracy,  and  the  short  and  simple 
scandals  of  the  poor. 

But  without  any  exploitation  of  the  seamy  side  of 
life,  it  is  well  to  know  that  scandal  and  crime  and  fam- 
ily dissension  are  not  exclusively  characteristic  of  the 
moneyless.  Over  yonder,  in  this  district  of  great 
wealth,  lived  a  man  who  rose  from  the  penitentiary  to 
world-wide  prominence  and  the  possession  of  millions 
of  dollars.  In  that  other  house,  easily  within  view  of 
the  59th  Street  corner,  lived  a  man  of  vast  financial, 
social  and  political  power,  with  the  additional  power 
of  mighty  family  connections:  but  scandal  came 
quietly  into  his  life,  and,  indeed,  quietly  snuffed  that 
life  away — for  a  woman  crept  into  this  great  palace 
one  night,  and  faced  him  in  his  stately,  somber  library 
— and  apoplexy  was  quietly  set  down  as  the  cause  of 
his  sudden  death. 

All,  here,  must  be  done  quietly.  The  amour  propre 
of  these  exclusive  people  must  not  be  disturbed,  even 
when  trouble  has  come,  as  it  so  often  has  come,  from 
what  may  be  termed  ''amours  impropre/' 

Those  who  may  have  been  disappointed  by  the  gen- 
eral orderliness  of  aspect  of  the  Bowery  will  note  that 
there  is  the  same  outward  orderliness  in  Fifth  Ave- 

194 


ABOVE  FORTY-SECOND 


nue.  And  if  I  mention  that  crimes,  divorces,  scandal- 
ously swift  new  marriages,  have  come  here,  and  that 
the  entire  gamut  of  disgrace  has  been  run  within  some 
of  these  palatial  homes,  it  is  only  to  be  remindful  that 
the  rich  and  the  poor  are  brothers  and  sisters  under 
the  skin,  and  that  shame  and  opprobrium  come  where 
there  is  no  excuse  of  poverty  and  of  straitened  lives. 

If,  to  the  numerous  unhappy  happenings  of  private 
life,  it  were  advisable  to  add  the  savage  tragedies  of 
business  in  which  dwellers  hereabouts  participated, 
and  the  ruthless  ruin  wrought  by  some  of  them  in 
Wall  Street,  and  the  betrayals  of  friendship  for  gold, 
it  would  merely  point  out,  still  further,  that  the  pos- 
session of  money  does  not  necessarily  add  to  the 
sweetness  of  life. 

But  there  are  many  wealthy  homes  here  that  have 
remained  untouched  by  scandal  or  by  crime;  there 
have  been  many  wealthy  folk  here  who  have  lived  self- 
respecting  lives,  and  many  others  whose  only  offense 
has  been  in  a  perhaps  too  ostentatious  expenditure, 
and  others,  or  at  least  one  other,  who  lived  in  so  pe- 
nurious a  way  that  his  clothes  were  cheaper  than  those 
that  any  clerk  in  his  own  office  would  dare  to  wear. 
Of  this  man,  who  left  seventy  millions  or  so,  which  is 
being  administered  in  public-spirited  undertakings 
and  charities  since  his  death,  it  used  to  be  told  that  he 
loved  to  ride  in  the  now  vanished  horse  stages,  on 
Fifth  Avenue,  for  the  fare  was  five  cents,  or  six  tickets 
for  a  quarter,  and  the  money  was  passed  from  hand  to 
hand  up  to  the  man  at  front  who  was  driver  and  con- 
ductor in  one;  and  this  cunning  seventy-millionaire 

195 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


would  take  his  seat  by  the  money-box,  would  buy  his 
quarter 's  worth  of  tickets,  and,  after  putting  his  own 
in  the  box,  would  sequester  the  other  nickels  as  they 
came  and  in  place  of  them  would  put  in  tickets,  thus 
making  five  cents,  or  on  fortunate  days  even  ten,  on  a 
single  trip.    It  kept  his  hand  in. 

A  great  society  leader  who  lived  not  far  above  59th 
Street,  the  greatest  leader  that  New  York  society  ever 
had,  used  especially  to  flaunt  in  the  faces  of  her  fol- 
lowers a  magnificent  necklace,  one  so  altogether  in- 
comparable that  society  worshiped  it  as  the  very  sign 
and  symbol  of  leadership.  But  after  the  great  social 
dictator's  death,  it  was  necessary  to  have  an  appraisal 
of  her  wealth — whereupon  it  was  discovered  that 
many  of  the  jewels  of  the  rich  necklace  that  society 
had  so  worshiped  were  false ! — a  striking  example  of 
the  worship,  by  society,  of  false  gauds. 

Quite  a  proportion  of  the  homes  of  Fifth  Avenue, 
now  some  and  now  others,  are  always  shuttered  and 
closed;  in  summer  because  it  is  warm,  in  winter  be- 
cause it  is  cold,  in  spring  or  fall  for  unguessable  rea- 
sons ;  all  with  blinds  drawn,  doors  boarded  up  tight, 
shut,  repellent.  A  restless  city  this,  with  too  much 
money.  Many  an  owner  of  this  or  that  home  is  in 
Florida  or  Maine,  in  the  Grand  Canon  on  the  way  to 
the  Pacific  coast,  or  at  Newport,  in  Bermuda,  or  in  the 
Berkshires  or  in  Europe. 

Fifth  Avenue  above  59th  Street  shows  wide  variety 
of  architecture.  There  are  imitation  chateaus,  some 
of  them  poor  imitations,  and  some  successful  copies 
of  the  gay  and  laughing  French  Renaissance:  there 

196 


ABOVE  FOKTY-SECOND 


are  dungeon-like  fortresses,  the  house  of  this  or  that 
sugar  king  or  banker  without  taste :  there  are  houses 
of  that  unattractive  period  known  as  Victorian :  and 
there  are  also,  among  the  newer  homes,  some  that  are 
simple  and  graceful  and  of  real  beauty. 

At  70th  Street,  and  occupying  the  block  to  71st  is  the 
finest  of  all,  the  finest  private  house  in  Manhattan. 
It  was  built  by  a  typical  New  Yorker ;  that  is  to  say,  a 
man  who  came  here  from  another  city — the  Pitts- 
burgher,  Frick,  and  if  I  should  add  his  first  names, 
Henry  Clay,  it  would  show,  in  good  American  fashion, 
that  he  was  born  when  the  Mill  Boy  of  the  Slashes  was 
at  the  height  of  his  fame.  The  Frick  house  is  French 
Classic  in  design ;  it  is  restful,  restrained,  simple,  not 
high,  admirable  in  proportion  and  symmetry ;  and  in 
front  is  a  broad  open  space  finely  greened  with  grass 
and  thickly  edged  with  old  box — one  wonders  what 
ancient  garden  in  Maryland  or  Virginia  was  depleted 
to  furnish  forth  this  box! 

A  few  blocks  farther  up  the  avenue  than  this  best 
house  in  New  York  is  the  house  of  a  western  copper 
king  which  fills  a  great  corner  with  a  fantasy  in  rococo, 
a  fantasy  in  stone  and  bronze  on  which  has  been  lav- 
ished more  money  than  on  any  other  home  in  New 
York. 

The  block  between  90th  and  91st  is  occupied  by  the 
home  of  Andrew  Carnegie.  It  is  built  in  the  old  Co- 
lonial way  and  is  admirable  so  far  as  the  Colonial  is 
followed;  that  is  to  say,  up  to  the  dormers,  which  are 
not  precisely  pleasing.  On  the  whole  it  is  an  effective 
and  even  charming  mansion,  built  of  brick  of  a  soft- 

197 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


colored  red,  and  with  trimmings  of  a  gray  stone  that 
is  ahnost  white.  Like  the  Frick  house,  this  has  gen- 
erously been  given  setting  and  spaciousness,  for  a 
great  open  garden  is  in  front  of  it ;  the  house  itself, 
rather  oddly,  facing  90th  Street  instead  of  Fifth  Ave- 
nue; and  about  the  open  space  is  a  great  open-work 
iron  fence  with  magnificent  stone  posts. 

And  it  is  one  of  the  most  striking  facts  in  regard  to 
New  York  that  what  may  be  considered  the  three  most 
distinguished  private  homes  in  the  city,  the  Frick  and 
Carnegie  homes  and  the  Schwab  home  on  Riverside 
Drive,  are  the  homes  of  wealthy  men  of  Pittsburgh 
who  came  to  New  York  after  their  fortunes  were 
made! 

For  New  York  is  a  magnet  that  draws  not  only 
young  men  eager  to  make  their  fortunes,  but  older  men 
whose  fortune  has  been  gained.  And  all  this  makes 
for  the  noticeable  lack  of  homogeneousness  in  the 
city.  Most  New  Yorkers  meet  none  with  whom  they 
are  on  terms  of  lifelong  friendship.  There  is  a 
marked  absence  of  first-name  intimacy.  It  is  largely, 
and  indeed  mostly,  a  city  of  detached  human  units. 

Facing  the  Carnegie  front  is  a  bare  lot,  squalid  and 
squatter-like,  unsightly,  even  immensely  ugly.  For 
years  the  multi-millionaire  has  faced  this  squalor,  but, 
as  I  write,  he  has  belatedly  bought  the  corner  and  will 
sell  it  to  some  one  who  will  build  a  home  there  and  not 
an  apartment  house. 

A  curious  feature  of  Fifth  Avenue,  in  the  portion 
facing  upper  Central  Park,  is  that  even  yet  there  are 

198 


ABOVE  FORTY-SECOND 


some  spots  which  have  never  been  built  upon;  there 
is  land  which  has  stood  absolutely  vacant,  held  for 
high  prices  during  all  these  years  of  the  city 's  growth. 

Central  Park,  stretching  from  59th  to  110th  Streets, 
and  from  Fifth  to  Eighth  Avenues,  is  one  of  the  noble 
city  parks  of  the  world,  in  dimensions,  in  beauty,  in 
variety  of  water  and  trees  and  rolling  ground  and 
levels,  in  flowers  and  shrubs,  in  great  spaces  given 
over  to  play.  There  seem  to  be  miles  of  rhododen- 
drons blooming  on  the  banks,  there  is  splendid  dog- 
wood blossoming  white,  and  everything  is  beautifully 
cared  for.  Retaining  all  the  charm  of  wildness,  with 
the  characteristics  of  the  best  of  landscape  gardening, 
it  fits  finely  that  fine  Wordsworthian  line,  ''the  pomp 
of  cultivated  nature. '  ^ 

The  prettiest  feature  of  the  park  is  the  May  Day 
parties,  when  many  a  Queen  of  the  May  leads  her  fol- 
lowers there,  all  gay  and  blythe  and  happy,  all  bub- 
bling with  anticipation,  all  in  holiday  garb  and  fancy 
dress,  which  is  usually  white  and  tinsel  and  gold  with 
ribbons  of  all  shades,  and  usually  there  are  vari-col- 
ored  streamers  for  the  girls  to  hold  as  they  dance 
around  a  Maypole,  and  often  there  is  music.  So 
many  parties  ask  for  permits  that  time  and  space 
must  be  allotted,  and  not  only  does  the  first  day  of 
May  make  the  great  open  space  of  the  park  gay  and 
delightful,  but  for  days  thereafter  many  a  party  still 
comes  gaily  to  the  park. 

Toward  evening  after  their  day  of  proud  excite- 
ment, the  little  girls  trail  homeward,  tired,  but  still 

199 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


steeped  in  happiness,  ready  to  lie  down  sleepily  and 
to  dream  of  the  excitement  of  the  May  Day  of  the  year 
to  come. 

The  Metropolitan  Museum,  a  great  mass  of  build- 
ings which  have  gone  up  gradually  since  the  founda- 
tion of  the  museum  in  1870,  is  located  in  Central  Park, 
just  above  Eightieth  Street,  and  faces  out  on  Fifth 
Avenue  in  a  great  long  frontage.  The  distinguished 
collections,  gathered  here  into  spacious  housing,  make 
this  preeminently  the  museum  of  America ;  indeed,  it 
has  already  become  one  of  the  great  museums  of  the 
world. 

There  are  galleries  of  paintings  by  the  greatest 
masters  of  the  past  and  the  present.  Titian  and  Rem- 
brandt and  Raphael  are  here.  Van  Dyok  and  Velas- 
quez are  here,  Botticelli  and  Franz  Hals  and  Reynolds 
are  here,  and  here  also  are  the  American,  Sargent,  and 
others  of  the  recent  and  present  years. 

The  sumptuous  collections  seem  to  cover  every 
branch  of  art  and  of  artistic  activity,  and  have  been 
gathered  from  every  corner  of  the  world.  There  is  a 
splendid  collection  of  sculpture.  There  are  laces  and 
textiles  that  represent  the  finest  technical  artistry  of 
the  world.  There  are  silver  and  glass  and  bronze  and 
copper  and  iron.  There  are  glorious  gatherings  of 
porcelain.  There  is  a  noble  presentation  of  ancient 
armor.  There  is  the  work  of  unknoAvn  men  of  the 
past  and  there  is  the  work  of  artists  and  artisans  who 
won  fame  with  their  genius. 

Notable  among  all  these  things  is  what  is  known 
as  the  Rospigliosi  Coupe,  a  wonderful  cup  by  the  won- 

200 


ABOVE  FORTY-SECOND 

derful  Florentine,  Benvenuto  Cellini,  perfect  in  its 
gorgeousness,  in  its  shape,  in  its  gold  and  enamels  and 
jewels. 

There  are  models  of  the  most  beautiful  architecture 
of  the  entire  world,  temples,  palaces,  cathedrals,  thus 
admirably  bringing  to  New  York  the  beauty  of  the 
world. 

In  the  labyrinthine  rooms,  endless  in  extent,  there  is 
opportunity  for  each  to  find  the  particular  kind  of  col- 
lection which  interests  him ;  and  perhaps  one  will  no- 
tice in  particular  a  replica  of  Houdon 's  Washington ; 
the  French  sculptor  having  been  brought  from  France 
to  America,  through  the  efforts  of  Franklin,  that  he 
might  give  to  the  world  George  Washington  in  imper- 
ishable marble;  and  there  is  also  Houdon 's  Paul 
J  ones,  this  being  a  replica  from  Houdon 's  studio,  and 
precisely  like  one  which  is  given  a  high  place  of  honor 
in,  of  all  places,  Edinburgh! — for  one  would  expect 
Paul  Jones  to  be  far  from  popular  in  Edinburgh,  as 
he  landed,  an  American  privateer,  at  Edinburgh's 
port  of  Leith,  frightened  away  the  soldiers,  and  levied 
contributions  at  will.  But  I  suppose  the  Scotch  look 
on  him  after  all  as  a  famous  Scotchman,  even  though 
as  an  adopted  American  he  frightened  Greai  Britain 
with  American  ships. 

There  is  an  excellent  collection  of  early  American 
furniture,  not  only  of  the  Sheraton  and  Chippendale 
and  Heppelwhite  styles,  but  also  of  pieces  which  set 
the  collection  in  a  class  by  itself  through  definitely 
representing  the  American  point  of  view.  For  exam- 
ple, importance  is  given  to  the  furniture  of  that  Dun- 

201 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


can  Phyf  e  who,  a  New  Yorker,  with  a  shop  near  Cham- 
bers Street,  made  admirable  pieces  of  furniture  in  the 
early  eighteen  hundreds,  and  won  high  reputation  as 
a  worker  and  designer  of  artistic  skill.  It  marks  dis- 
tinct advance  in  national  taste  and  knowledge,  that  the 
best  museums,  such  as  those  of  New  York  and  Boston 
and  Philadelphia,  include  the  furniture  of  a  century 
and  a  century  and  a  half  ago  among  the  products  of 
real  art — shapes  and  makes  that  may  still  be  gathered 
— and  it  was  this  cabinet  maker  of  New  York,  Phyf  e, 
who,  more  than  any  other  worker  on  his  side  of  the 
Atlantic,  carried  on  fine  furniture  making  as  an  art. 

A  further  matter  of  interest  from  a  local  New  York 
standpoint  is  a  glorious  punch  bowl,  of  mighty  dimen- 
sions, with  a  view  of  New  York  harbor  covering  its 
entire  bottom.  It  was  made  in  Canton  and  is  of  Chi- 
nese Lowestoft,  and  was  presented  to  New  York  City 
on  July  4,  1812,  by  a  long  forgotten  General  Morton. 
The  view  is  from  Brooklyn  and  shows  the  sky-line  of 
early  days ;  and  the  bowl  was  until  recent  years  kept 
on  exhibition  in  the  City  Hall,  and  flowed  with  punch 
at  all  civic  jollifications. 

Close  behind  the  Museum  buildings,  stands  what  is 
almost  forgotten  in  these  busy  modern  days,  although 
for  a  long  time  it  was  one  of  the  most  visited  objects 
in  the  entire  city.  It  is  still  referred  to  as  Cleopatra 
Needle,  although  it  is  far  older  than  the  time  of  that 
friend  of  Mark  Antony.  It  is  a  tall  obelisk,  covered 
with  hieroglyphics,  and  was  brought  here  from  Egypt 
years  ago,  towed  in  a  box-like  receptacle,  behind  a 

202 


ABOVE  FORTY-SECOND 


steamer,  and  it  is  typically  American  that  the  one  fact 
generally  referred  to  in  regard  to  it  is  that  the  cost  of 
getting  it  here  from  Egypt  was  one  hundred  thousand 
dollars.  It  is  seventy-one  feet  high,  and  was  quarried 
in  the  sixteenth  century  before  Christ,  in  the  reign  of 
Thotmes  the  Third,  at  Syene.  Its  weight  is  488,000 
pounds.  It  was  set  up  before  the  Temple  of  the  Sun, 
at  Heliopolis. 

Its  journey  to  New  York,  less  than  half  a  century 
ago,  was  not  the  first  journey  in  its  history,  for  it  so 
attracted  the  attention  of  the  ancient  Romans,  as 
standing  for  art  and  what  even  then  was  ancient  his- 
tory, that  it  was  carried  down  to  Alexandria  and  set 
up  there  as  a  mighty  trophy,  it  then  being  about  six- 
teen hundred  years  of  age. 

And  this  great  obelisk,  with  its  inscriptions  of  thou- 
sands of  years  ago  still  plainly  upon  it,  stands  here  in 
the  heart  of  New  York ;  this  splendid  relic  of  a  mistily 
distant  antiquity  rises  beside  a  park  driveway  in  this 
most  modern  of  cities ! 

It  has  outlasted  wonderful  civilizations.  It  saw  the 
fall  of  Egypt.  It  stood  while  Rome  rose  to  world  su- 
premacy and  sank  to  nothingness.  Through  the 
course  of  centuries,  other  mighty  powers  rose  and  fell. 
It  was  after  it  had  stood  at  Alexandria  about  as  long 
as  it  had  before  that  stood  at  Heliopolis,  that  it  was 
brought  to  New  York ;  and  it  may  well  be  wondered 
what  other  journey,  in  the  course  of  coming  centuries, 
may  yet  be  in  store  for  it.  As  compared  with  the 
sixteen  hundred  years  that  it  stood  at  Heliopolis,  and 

203 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


the  eighteen  hundred  years  that  it  stood  at  Alexan- 
dria, Americans  need  not  think  that  any  particular 
permanence  is  represented  by  the  petty  forty  years  or 
so  that  it  has  stood  in  Central  Park. 


204 


CHAPTER  XVI 


ON"  MUKRAY  HILL 

HARLES  DICKENS,  when, 
from  curiosity  and  interest, 
he  attended  an  exhibition  of 
the  Spiritualists,  felt  that  an 
excellent  test  could  be  made 
by  calling  for  the  ghost  of 
Lindley  Murray,  whereupon 
he  did  so,  and  was  rewarded 
by  catching  the  ghost  in  a 
grammatical  blunder — which 
to  Dickens  was  evidence  sufficient  that  it  was  not 
really  Lindley  Murray's  spirit,  for  Lindley  Murray 
was  looked  upon  in  England  as  the  highest  possible 
authority  on  English  grammar;  his  supremacy  was 
unchallenged — and  this  in  spite  of  the  amusing  and 
amazing  fact  that  he  was  an  American,  and  that  the 
home  of  his  parents  has  given  name  to  that  aristo- 
cratic section  of  New  York  City  known  as  Murray 
Hill. 

When  Sydney  Smith,  in  1820,  published  his  cele- 
brated gibe  on  America,  demanding  to  know,  among 
other  things,  who  ever  read  an  American  book,  he  was 
too  intelligent  a  man  not  to  know  that  Washington 

205 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


Irving  of  New  York  had  been  hailed  as  a  great  au- 
thor by  the  greatest  of  British  authors,  and  he  also 
knew  that  a  book  by  another  New  Yorker,  Lindley 
Murray,  had  been  accepted  as  the  standard  authority 
on  writing  by  all  British  writers,  and  that  he,  Sydney 
Smith  himself,  paid  it  deference. 

The  house  of  the  Murrays  was  the  scene  of  one  of 
the  finest  and  prettiest  stories  in  all  American  history. 
It  was  a  mansion  standing  in  the  midst  of  a  large 
estate,  in  the  vicinity  of  what  is  now  East  37th  Street 
and  Park  Avenue,  and  a  tablet  on  a  bowlder,  set 
against  the  railed-in  greenery  in  the  middle  of  the 
avenue,  marks  the  spot  where  the  house  stood.  The 
district  now  known  as  Murray  Hill  reaches  in  a  gen- 
eral way  from  34th  Street  to  42d  Street  and  from 
Lexington  Avenue  across  Madison  and  Park  to  Fifth. 
It  is  still  somewhat  of  a  hill :  a  slight  rise  is  noticeable 
in  mounting  Fifth  Avenue,  and  the  trolley-car  tunnel 
on  Park  Avenue  is  even  more  of  an  evidence.  The 
district,  in  spite  of  the  inroads  of  business,  still  carries 
itself  with  an  air.  In  the  Revolutionary  period  the 
Murray  mansion  stood  in  isolation. 

There  was  great  excitement  there  on  a  day  in  the 
middle  of  September  in  1776,  for  British  troops  had 
landed  nearby,  on  the  East  River  shore,  and  were  pre- 
paring to  advance  across  Manhattan  Island. 

The  general  military  situation  was  serious.  The 
British  under  General  Howe  had  occupied  Staten 
Island  early  in  July,  much  to  the  disturbance  of  Wash- 
ington, who  had  had  no  means  of  preventing  it.  Soon 
afterwards  Howe^s  brother,  Admiral  Howe,  arrived 

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ON  MURKAY  HILL 


from  England,  and  other  forces  came  up  from  the 
southward,  making  a  total  of  fully  24,000  men.  The 
British  did  not,  however,  attempt  to  cross  the  bay 
directly  to  Manhattan,  but,  after  more  than  a  month's 
reflection,  went  over  to  Long  Island,  landing  at 
Gravesend.  On  August  26th  was  fought  the  unfortu- 
nate battle  of  Long  Island,  following  which  Washing- 
ton achieved  the  marvelous  feat,  which  immensely 
astonished  the  British,  of  safely  transporting  his 
beaten  and  outnumbered  army  to  Manhattan  Island. 

Washington  hoped  to  hold  New  York,  and  stationed 
his  troops  at  various  points  to  prevent  a  British  cross- 
ing. For  over  two  weeks  the  leisurely  British  made 
no  attempt  to  get  over  the  East  Biver,  but  on  Septem- 
ber 15th,  when  they  were  quite  ready,  they  began  send- 
ing boatload  after  boatload  of  soldiers  and  landing 
them  at  Kip's  Bay,  on  the  lower  edge  of  the  great 
Murray  estate,  at  the  end  of  what  is  now  East  34th 
Street. 

Washington  had  left  his  army  in  a  dangerous  po- 
sition through  the  desire  not  to  lose  prestige  for  Amer- 
ica by  giving  up  New  York  and  Manhattan  Island.  A 
little  later  in  his  career,  when  he  had  been  broadened 
by  experience,  he  would  not,  even  to  please  the  Pro- 
vincial Congress  and  to  encourage  the  people  in  gen- 
eral, have  taken  such  a  risk  as  to  leave  his  army  scat- 
tered over  many  miles  of  a  narrow  island,  liable  to  be 
separated  and  cut  in  half.  He  trusted  to  a  vigorous 
defense  by  his  soldiers  and  swift  concentration  of 
more  troops  at  any  threatened  point — but  when  the 
moment  of  trial  came,  the  American  soldiers  at  Kip 's 

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THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


Bay,  at  the  very  appearance  of  the  British,  fled  in  dis- 
order, without  firing  a  shot;  whereupon  more  and 
more  of  the  British  landed  and  in  leisurely  fashion 
prepared  to  march  across  the  island. 

Washington  galloped  toward  the  danger  point.  He 
reached  the  fleeing  troops  not  far  from  what  is  now 
40th  Street  and  Park  Avenue  and  tried  to  check  the  re- 
treat. He  was  in  a  fierce  rage.  He  struck  at  the  men 
with  the  flat  of  his  sword,  he  clicked  his  pistols  at 
them,  he  fiercely  ordered  them  to  halt  and  form,  but 
in  vain.  Panic  had  seized  them,  and  they  would  not 
heed.  He  knew,  in  those  moments  of  bitterness,  that 
this  almost  surely  meant  the  destruction  of  his  army 
and  therefore  the  loss  of  the  war.  He  turned  his 
horse  *s  head  toward  the  British  and  moved,  alone,  in 
that  direction.  And  one  thinks  of  Napoleon  in  the 
rout  of  Waterloo,  turning  his  horse's  head  as  if  to  ad- 
vance on  the  British  but  drawn  back  by  an  officer  who 
seized  the  bridle  and  demanded  to  know  if  the  Em- 
peror would  charge  the  enemy  alone ;  for  here  on  Park 
Avenue  a  young  officer  seized  the  bridle  of  Washing- 
ton's horse  and  urged  the  general  to  come  away; 
which,  after  a  moment's  hesitation,  Washington,  al- 
ways superb  master  of  himself,  did. 

Then  he  sent  messengers  galloping  swiftly  to  Gen- 
eral Putnam,  who  was  in  command  at  the  southern 
end  of  the  island,  ordering  swift  and  instant  retreat 
to  the  northward,  and  he  checked,  at  length,  the  disor- 
dered huddling  of  the  flying  men. 

Fortunately,  there  could  have  been  no  better  man, 
ready  for  action  at  an  instant's  notice,  than  Israel 

208 


ON  MUREAY  HILL 


Putnam,  *  ^  Old  Put. ' '  Had  Israel  Putnam  lived  thou- 
sands of  years  ago,  his  single-handed  struggle  with  a 
wolf  in  its  den  would  have  put  him  in  the  legendary 
class  with  Ulysses  and  the  lion — and  probably,  after 
all,  that  lion  of  Ulysses  was  only  a  magnified  wolf. 
Had  Putnam  lived  in  mediaeval  days  Scott  would  have 
immortalized  him  in  verse  on  account  of  his  gallop 
down  the  rocks  at  Greenwich.  Had  he  been  a  general 
under  Napoleon  or  Wellington  such  an  achievement 
as  his  on  this  day  of  Murray  Hill  would  have  kept  his 
name  prominently  honored  in  history.  But  since  he 
was  only  an  American  of  the  Revolution  he  is  just 
'^Old  Puf 

The  moment  he  received  his  orders  he  collected  his 
troops  and  started  northward.  Alexander  Hamilton 
hurried  along,  in  charge  of  a  battery.  The  redoubt- 
able Knox  drew  in  his  men  and  cannon  from  a  fort  on 
a  slight  eminence  that,  on  account  of  Boston  memor- 
ies, had  been  given  the  name  of  Bunker  Hill,  and  which 
was  on  what  is  now  Grand  Street.  And  Aaron  Burr, 
capable  and  brave  as  he  was,  guided  the  entire  force, 
by  obscure  paths  and  lanes,  keeping  them  as  near  the 
North  River  as  possible,  to  increase  the  chances  of 
safely  escaping  the  British. 

What  a  scene  it  was,  and  what  men  took  active 
part :  Washington,  Putnam,  Burr,  Hamilton,  Knox ! 
In  Edinburgh,  in  Paris,  in  Rome,  in  London,  such  a 
day,  with  such  men,  would  forever  be  written  about 
in  prose  and  in  poetry,  and  especially  from  the  de- 
lightful end  of  it  all,  which  was  to  come  with  a  ro- 
mantic tang  from  the  Murray  mansion. 

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THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


General  Washington  waited  in  an  agony  of  anxiety. 
At  length  his  scouts  brought  word  that  the  British 
had  halted  near  the  Murray  mansion. 

And  the  cause  of  it  all  was  amazing.  The  greatest 
man  of  his  time  had  vainly  done  all  that  man  could  do 
to  stop  the  British — and  then  a  woman  made  the  at- 
tempt and  won! 

She  won  with  woman's  weapons.  It  was  one  of 
those  desperate  days  that  come  to  New  York  in  mid- 
September.  Mrs.  Murray,  Mary  Lindley  Murray, 
whose  husband  was  Robert  Murray,  well  known  to  be 
a  British  loyalist,  and  whose  son  was  Lindley  Murray, 
was  herself  in  entire  sympathy  with  the  Americans. 
She  had  watched  their  disorderly  retreat;  she  knew, 
or  at  least  divined,  what  overwhelming  disaster  was 
imminent.  And  so  she  seized  the  moment  when  some 
of  the  leading  officers  were  passing  her  house,  to 
check  them.  And  it  was  so  simply  done!  She  in- 
vited them  in  to  rest  and  take  a  glass  of  wine  and 
some  cake!  Handsome,  a  lady  of  high  degree,  an 
American  grande  dame,  the  wife  of  a  loyalist,  her  in- 
vitation was  accepted.  The  day  was  hot.  There  was 
no  hurry,  thought  the  easy  British.  And  so  Lord 
Howe  and  his  leading  officers  entered  Mrs.  Murray's 
home,  and  the  British  soldiers  threw  themselves 
loungingly  on  the  grass  and  under  the  trees.  Thus 
the  British  advance  was  halted.  And  meanwhile, 
Putnam's  men  were  swiftly  marching  northward. 

And  one  cannot  but  picture  the  feelings  of  Mrs. 
Murray  who,  smiling,  cheerful,  cordial,  well-gowned, 
hiding  her  intense  anxiety,  receiving  the  homage  of 

210 


ON  MUEEAY  HILL 


the  scarlet-coated  men  of  title,  listening  to  their  flat- 
tering toasts,  was  also  listening  and  intensely  hoping 
for  something  that  would  tell  her  that  her  effort  was 
not  in  vain.  And  by  the  time  that  the  leisurely  British 
were  ready  to  march,  and  had  made  their  farewell 
compliments  and  adieux,  the  forces  of  Putnam  and 
Washington  had  united  and  the  danger  was  over. 

The  spot  where  the  two  generals  met  is  still  remem- 
bered. It  is  on  Broadway,  between  43d  and  44th 
Streets ;  and  a  commemorative  tablet  has  been  placed 
on  the  building  which  stands  there.  And  it  makes  the 
event  the  more  striking,  that  the  meeting  place  was  on 
Long  Acre  Square,  in  the  center  of  the  present  theater 
and  dining  and  pleasure  district  of  the  city!  From 
this  spot  the  two  generals  moved  their  united  forces 
northward  to  Harlem. 

Two  nights  before  the  visit  of  General  Howe  and 
his  officers,  the  Murray  mansion  had  had  an  even 
more  distinguished  guest,  for  Washington  himself  had 
stayed  there ;  and  Eobert  Murray,  Quaker  and  Eoyal- 
ist  sympathizer  though  he  was,  could  not  but  feel  hon- 
ored by  the  visit  of  so  great  a  man,  even  though  it 
was  made  on  account  of  military  convenience  and  was 
a  visit  which  could  not  have  been  declined.  And  there 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  recent  presence  of  Washing- 
ton, and  the  immense  impression  that  he  always  made, 
on  men  and  women  alike,  had  the  direct  result  of  spur- 
ring the  patriotic  Mrs.  Murray,  so  shortly  afterwards, 
to  her  delightfully  superb  effort. 

The  Grand  Central  Eailway  Station,  at  the  north- 
ern edge  of  Murray  Hill,  is  among  the  great  railway 

211 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


stations  of  the  world,  for  size  and  for  vastness  of  pas- 
senger traffic  handled.  The  railway  tracks  come  into 
the  station  after  several  miles  of  burrowing  beneath 
the  streets,  and  enter  the  station  itself  on  two  levels 
of  tracks,  one  above  the  other. 

In  the  quiet  car-less  eddy  of  Madison  Avenue  below 
42d  Street,  where  the  hill  shows  very  plainly  in  the 
vistas  down  all  the  streets,  stands  the  big,  square- 
fronted  house  that  was  the  home  of  the  late  J.  Pier- 
pont  Morgan ;  it  is  but  a  dull-looking  house,  after  all, 
one  thinks :  not  such  a  home  as  would  be  expected  for 
a  man  of  world-wide  financial  power  who  was  at  the 
same  time  a  princely  collector  of  objects  of  art.  But 
around  the  corner,  on  36th  Street,  is  a  building  which 
he  put  up  to  represent  his  ideals,  and  to  house  a  pri- 
vate collection,  especially  of  books  and  manuscripts, 
which  had  cost  him  fabulous  sums.  The  building  is  an 
architectural  gem ;  it  is  of  white  marble,  low-set,  tem- 
ple-like, small,  yet  with  an  air  of  gentle  spaciousness 
and  surrounded  by  a  small  area  of  exquisitely  kept 
grass. 


212 


CHAPTER  XVII 


MI1>ST  PLEASURES  AND  PALACES 


Oit  the  typical  pleasures  of  New 
York,  according  to  popular 
fancy,  people  go  to  the  Great 
White  Way"  and  its  palaces — 
and  if  the  palaces  are  largely 
those  which  are  colloquially  of 
the  kind  termed  lobster,"  the 
idea  still  holds. 


But  a  curious  thing  about  this 


White  Way"  part  of  Broadway,  which  is  supposed 
to  be  so  representative  of  the  city,  is  that  in  the  day- 
time it  is  far  from  being  the  best  looking  part  of  the 
city.  There  are  not  serried  rows  of  mighty  business 
buildings.  There  is  not  the  air  of  wealthy  comfort 
that  attends  those  portions  of  the  city  where  great 
new  apartment  houses  vie  with  individual  homes. 
On  the  gay  night  region  of  Broadway  most  of  the 
buildings  are  unattractive,  and  even  ugly:  they  are 
uneven,  irregular,  bizarre  of  effect;  and  taken  col- 
lectively the  effect  is  even  less  desirable  than  when 
taken  building  by  building  or  block  by  block.  This 
most  famous  portion  of  Broadway  has  much  of  the 
rough  irregularity  of  the  main  street  of  a  mining  city ; 


213 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


and,  furthermore,  the  street  itself  is  in  a  chronic  state 
of  being  torn  up,  for  repairs  or  new  pavement,  or  for 
putting  in  new  sewer  pipes,  or  for  building  or  alter- 
ing a  subway. 

At  night  it  is  really  a  region  of  gayety.  Then  the 
ugliness  of  torn-up  street  and  of  uneven  and  unat- 
tractive architecture  is  undiscerned  or  unregarded. 
A  new  Broadway  has  come  with  darkness,  a  Broad- 
way of  lights  and  lightsomeness  and  lightheartedness. 

A  great  part  of  the  people  who  move  along  the 
*  *  Great  White  Way ' '  are  not  New  Yorkers,  but  visit- 
ors :  and  it  is  these  who  furnish  the  chief  support  of 
much  of  the  more  vicious  and  vivacious  features. 
The  New  Yorker  himself,  unless  he  is  one  of  the  idle 
sons  of  the  rich,  has  his  daily  work  to  do.  He  goes  to 
the  theater,  if  he  is  a  typical  intelligent  New  Yorker, 
often  enough  to  keep  in  touch  with  the  best  or  most 
notable  plays  and  shows''  of  the  season.  He  often 
dines  at  some  well-kno^v^Ti  restaurant — although,  be- 
ing a  New  Yorker,  he  is  quite  likely  to  choose  a  place 
that  is  just  away  from  the  rush  of  pretentiousness. 
And  he  goes  home  at  an  hour  neither  particularly 
early  nor  particularly  late,  for  he  must  be  clear- 
headed at  his  office  next  morning.  He  is  not  an  early- 
to-bed  man.    But  he  is  not  an  all-night  rounder." 

But  the  visitor  to  New  York  is  different.  The  vis- 
itor has  money  to  spend  and  prefers  spending  it  dur- 
ing the  hours  of  artificial  light.  And  he  isn't  in  any 
hurry  to  get  to  his  hotel  and  bed,  for  he  doesn't  care 
if  he  sleeps  until  noon  next  day.  The  closing  of  res- 
taurants and  cabarets  at  one  in  the  morning,  on  ac- 

214 


MIDST  PLEASURES  AND  PALACES 


count  of  our  entry  into  the  World  War,  affected  New 
Yorkers  comparatively  little  but  visitors  a  great 
deal. 

The  visitor  is  apt  to  be  frankly  in  search,  not  only 
of  the  high-priced  and  hectic  but  of  the  lax  and  loose. 
At  his  home  in  some  distant  city  he  is  probably  a 
quiet  enough  citizen,  a  staid  business  man,  but  on 
Broadway  he  is  likely  to  get  a  fifty  cent  cigar  between 
his  teeth  and  fling  extravagant  tips,  and  become  arro- 
gant and  boastful,  and  make  it  clear  that  he  *^has  the 
price'';  and  if,  afterwards,  he  offers  an  excuse,  it  is 
the  world-old  plea  that  *Hhe  woman  tempted  me  and 
I  did  treat/'  It  is  this  class  of  man  who,  inviting  and 
receiving  the  attentions  of  swindlers  and  robbers  and 
sharpers,  gets  into  the  police  courts  and  gives  New 
York  more  of  a  reputation  for  wickedness  than  it  de- 
serves. For,  after  all,  the  average  New  Yorker  is 
neither  victimizer  nor  victimized. 

The  spender''  is  a  feature  of  New  York  night  life. 
It  is  estimated,  by  such  as  have  particular  opportun- 
ity to  know,  that  merely  for  holding  the  checkroom 
privileges  of  the  popular  restaurants  and  hotels,  from 
two  to  ten  thousand  dollars  is  annually  paid  and  that, 
for  special  cab  and  taxi-stand  privileges,  the  annual 
payment  may  be  from  two  thousand  dollars  up  to  ten 
or  twenty  or  even  thirty  thousand — for  the  real 
spender  must  never  walk! 

There  are  many  visitors  who,  though  they  have 
yearned  for  the  sparkle  and  gayety  and  lights,  and 
have  longed  to  be  part  of  it,  desire  perfect  respecta- 
bility: people  who  love  to  catch  their  breath  at  the 

215 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOBK 


edge  of  wickedness,  but  who  are  not  going  to  be  even 
a  small  particle  wicked. 

I  remember  a  dear  old  university  president  from 
the  West,  now  dead,  who  looked  me  up  one  day  to  say, 
with  delightful  hesitations  and  backings  and  fillings, 
that  as  he  had  known  me  for  years  he  wanted  to  ask 
me  to  show  him  about  the  city  and  take  him  into 
places  which  a  dignified  old  university  president 
could  scarcely  find  alone.  ^  *  Nothing  out  of  the  way  * ' 
— he  was  absolutely  sincere  about  that — *^but — ^you 
know — something  not  too  deadly  respectable."  And 
I  remember  his  smile  as  he  said  this.  He  wanted  a 
little  of  the  spice,  pepper,  tabasco  of  life,  and  it  was 
easy  enough  to  find  them  within  the  desired  limita- 
tions. And  I  remember  that  he  did  not  want  to  go  to 
bed  at  his  usual  home  hour :  it  was  the  usual  lure  of 
the  Hghts. 

It  is  estimated,  by  railway  officials,  that,  entirely 
exclusive  of  commuters,  fully  two  hundred  thousand 
visitors  enter  New  York  City  every  day!  And  a 
large  part  enter  through  the  station  of  the  Pennsyl- 
vania Eailroad,  a  palatial  structure,  a  mighty,  mass- 
ive pillared  building  built  over  a  great  area,  near 
Broadway,  for  the  entire  two  blocks  from  33d  to  31st 
Streets.  It  is  literally  palatial :  the  word  is  no  mere 
figure  of  speech.  It  is  mighty,  it  is  wonderful  and  it 
is  beautiful.  It  is  of  superb  classic  design,  as  if  it 
were  **the  glory  that  was  Greece  and  the  grandeur 
that  was  Eome ' '  put  into  stone  in  modern  America. 

Its  vast  interior  extent,  its  breadths  and  heights, 
its  groined  roofs,  its  stone  stairways  mighty  of  width, 

216 


CLASSIC   PILLARS   OF  THE   PENNSYLVANIA  STATION 


MIDST  PLEASUEES  AND  PALACES 

its  air  of  princely  magnificence — yet  all  this,  not  the 
artistic  dream  of  some  monarch  of  unlimited  wealth 
who  a  stately  pleasure  dome  decreed,  but  the  work  of 
a  railway  company  for  the  use  of  the  public !  It  gives 
the  impression  more  of  an  enormous  concourse  for 
the  reception  and  departure  of  people  than  a  place  of 
trains,  for  all  the  trains  run  in  excavated  courses, 
underneath;  none  are  for  surface  traffic  on  Manhat- 
tan ;  they  come  under  the  East  Eiver  from  New  Eng- 
land and  Long  Island,  and  from  the  westward  be- 
neath the  Hudson  Eiver,  and  intermediately  burrow 
beneath  the  city  streets.  In  never-ceasing  throngs 
visitors  are  arriving  at  this  terminal,  at  the  Grand 
Central,  and  at  the  terminals  of  the  other  railroads. 
And  every  visitor  is  certain  to  see  Broadway  at  night. 

It  must  not  be  thought  that  when  night  falls  New 
York  is  quietly  at  home,  leaving  Broadwa;,  in  the  pos- 
session of  strangers!  During  much  of  the  evening 
New  Yorkers  are  much  in  evidence.  And  this  is  nat- 
ural. With  an  immense  proportion  of  the  popula- 
tion, with  almost  all  in  fact,  there  is  compression  of 
home  life ;  and  this,  not  only  in  the  tenements  but  in 
apartment  houses.  From  that  compression  the  peo- 
ple must  get  away.  The  theaters,  the  restaurants,  the 
moving  pictures,  the  recreation  piers,  the  lighted 
streets,  all  draw  them,  and  it  is  natural  that  they 
should  be  drawn.  The  more  or  less  legendary  ex- 
ample of  the  five  families  occupying  one  room,  with 
one  family  in  each  corner  and  one  in  the  middle,  and 
all  getting  on  comfortably  until  the  family  in  the 
middle  began  to  take  boarders,  illustrates  the  com- 

217 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


pression  of  the  city's  life,  which  thrusts  its  people 
out  upon  Grand  Street  as  on  Broadway.  But  New 
Yorkers,  poor  and  rich  alike,  have  their  work  to  do 
next  day,  even  though  at  night  the  rich  man  may  have 
waited  for  a  while  in  what  has  been  termed  the  *  *  silk- 
stocking  bread  line,''  for  his  chance  at  a  table  in  a 
hectically  fashionable  dining-room. 

One  of  the  strildng  differences  between  the  gayest 
region  of  Paris  and  that  of  New  York — and  these  two 
cities  are  naturally  to  be  compared,  for  they  are  the 
gayest  cities  of  the  world  for  spenders";  and  I  am 
referring,  now,  not  to  war-time  but  to  normal  times 
of  peace — is  that  so  much  of  the  Parisian  gayety  is 
cheerfully  in  evidence  at  boulevard  tables,  a  feature 
quite  omitted  in  New  York,  which  interprets  the  open- 
ness of  the  boulevard  into  terms  of  lofty  roof -gar- 
dens. 

New  York  is  the  diamond  stick-pin  on  the  shirt- 
front  of  America.  And  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  or 
state  that,  because  average  New  Yorkers  get  to  bed 
earlier  than  average  visitors,  New  Yorkers  are  an 
economical  race.  For  those  who  have  money  to  spend 
love  to  spend  it !  While  one  half  of  the  city  is  trou- 
bled with  the  high  cost  of  living,  the  other  half  learns, 
conversely,  the  cost  of  high  living;  and  it  may  be 
added  that  neither  half  knows  how  the  other  half 
lives. 

Broadway  has  always  been  loved.  Mrs.  John 
Adams,  Abigail  Adams,  when  necessarily  removing 
from  New  York  to  Philadelphia,  that  having  been 
made  the  national  capital  and  her  husband  being 

218 


MIDST  PLEASURES  AND  PALACES 


Vice-President,  wrote,  *^And  when  all  is  done  it  will 
not  be  Broadway.''  And  this  from  a  Boston  woman, 
a  Quincy  and  an  Adams ! 

The  theaters  of  the  city  are  vast  in  number,  and 
throngs  night  after  night  fill  them. 

The  theaters  are  of  all  sizes,  from  those  which  are  so 
tiny  that  people  on  opposite  sides  of  the  intimate 
little  auditorium  can  almost  shake  hands  across  the 
intervening  space,  to  the  show-places  of  immensity, 
with  their  rows  of  seats  stretching  off  through  in- 
credible space  into  incredible  remoteness.  No  other 
city  rivals  New  York  in  theaters.  And  yet  it  ought 
to  be  pride-chastening  to  know  that  ancient  Rome 
had  a  theater  that  seated  many  thousand  more  spec- 
tators than  New  York's  greatest.  Still,  even  that 
Roman  Coliseum  was  alone.  There  was  no  aggrega- 
tion of  theaters  in  Rome,  ablaze  with  lights,  thronged 
nightly  with  a  huge  total  of  tens  of  thousands ;  and  in 
this  total  of  theaters,  catering  as  they  do  to  every 
class.  New  York  stands  unexcelled. 

Moving  picture  houses  are  infinitely  numerous,  and 
they  vary  from  the  humble  five-centers  to  the  great 
theaters,  built  especially  for  picture-giving,  whose 
seats  will  range  from  fifteen  cents  to  a  half  dollar. 
These  great  new  theaters  offer  at  their  best  a  delight 
to  the  ear  and  to  the  eye,  comfortable  seats,  a  glow  of 
color,  a  great  deal  of  music,  and  an  entertainment 
which  in  all  is  likely  to  be  of  quite  as  good  an  influ- 
ence as  the  plays  at  the  high-priced  theaters  next 
door;  and  these  movies,"  with  the  big  vaudeville 
theaters,  represent  a  revolt  of  the  people  against 

219 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


high  prices  for  an  evening's  entertainment  and 
against  late  hours  of  beginning,  and  against  long 
waits  between  acts,  and  against  that  absence  of  music 
which  marks  a  growing  number  of  the  expensive 
theaters. 

New  York  unquestionably  is  the  center  for  the 
American  drama;  the  legitimate.''  Whether  its 
judgment  is  right  or  wrong,  it  is  practically  final,  for 
no  play  is  deemed  a  success  in  America  unless  it  has 
won  Broadway  approval,  or  what  is  called  Broad- 
way," for  the  most  important  plays,  presented  by  the 
best  actors,  are  nowadays  much  more  likely  to  be 
given,  not  at  the  theaters  actually  on  Broadway,  but 
at  this  or  that  of  a  new  order  of  theater,  built  close 
to  Broadway  but  just  off  it ;  new  theaters  with  little 
insignificant  lobbies  through  which  the  people  hurry 
as  fast  as  possible,  instead  of  the  great  foyers  of  not 
many  years  ago  where  everybody  liked  to  see  and  be 
seen. 

This  has  had  a  marked  effect  on  the  general  char- 
acter of  the  Broadway  after-theater  throng ;  for  most 
of  the  better-looking  people,  the  more  intelligent  and 
less  noisily  dressed,  leave  the  theaters  on  these  side 
streets,  and  make  their  way  home  in  their  own  motor- 
cars or  by  subway  or  Elevated  or  Fifth  Avenue  bus, 
without  even  setting  foot  on  Broadway.  The  inter- 
esting, vivacious,  well-groomed  after-theater  throng 
of  the  past,  crowding  the  Broadway  sidewalks  as  it 
did,  has  thus  gone. 

That  the  hotels  in  New  York  have  become  of  im- 
mense size  and  growing  importance,  is  due  not  only 

220 


MIDST  PLEASURES  AND  PALACES 


to  the  increasing  number  of  visitors,  but  to  a  marked 
tendency  on  the  part  of  certain  well-to-do  classes  of 
New  Yorkers,  and  suburban  home-owners  who  spend 
a  month  or  two  in  tow,  to  make  their  homes  at  hotels, 
and  also  to  the  increasing  use  of  hotels  by  New  York- 
ers who  live  in  apartment  houses. 

This  last  development  is  singular,  but  at  the  same 
time  has  been  inevitable.  For  even  the  rich  cannot 
entertain  freely  in  their  apartments.  There  is  not 
enough  room  there,  and  so  more  and  more  they  enter- 
tain at  the  great  hotels.  The  daughters  of  the  rich 
are  married  at  hotels,  there  are  dinners  at  the  hotels, 
there  are  dances  and  receptions  at  the  hotels,  instead 
of,  as  in  the  New  York  of  the  past,  at  private  homes. 
East  Side  parties  or  weddings  or  dinners,  at  an  East 
Side  restaurant  or  hall,  became  long  ago  the  East 
Side's  way  of  getting  over  the  lack  of  tenement-house 
space,  and  in  recent  years  the  wealthy  have  adopted 
this  idea  for  themselves  and  carried  it  out  with  their 
usual  lavishness  of  expense. 

Afternoon  tea  has  become  another  feature  of  Amer- 
ican life,  and  the  New  York  hotel  tea-rooms  and  the 
dining  and  lunching  rooms,  and  the  hotel  corridors 
and  down-stairs  lobbies,  now  give  opportunity  for  the 
display  of  woman's  beauty  and  woman's  gowns. 

No  city  in  the  world  is  so  alive  with  light,  so  bril- 
liant, so  glowing,  so  radiant,  so  gleaming,  so  spark- 
ling, as  is  New  York.  The  Hessian  Baroness  Rie- 
desel  lived  for  a  time  on  Long  Island  when  her  hus- 
band, the  Baron,  had  his  soldiers  there,  in  Revolu- 
tionary days,  and  she  wrote:      Every  evening  I  saw 

221 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


from  my  window  the  city  of  New  York  entirely 
lighted  up.''  And  the  city,  except  for  after  one 
o'clock  in  the  morning  war  orders,  still  maintains  its 
lighted-up  characteristics. 

The  dweller  in  Manhattan  forgets  what  night  is. 
That  is  to  say,  he  forgets  the  meaning  of  night  and  of 
darkness  in  the  sense  in  which  night  and  darkness  are 
known  to  people  of  other  places,  not  only  in  country 
regions  but  in  other  cities.  Throughout  the  night 
brilliant  lights  are  everywhere.  No  Manhattan 
dweller  ever  knows  whether  or  not,  at  night,  the  moon 
is  shining,  and  that  he  should  have  any  knowledge  as 
to  whether  or  not  the  stars  are  out  is  ridiculously  un- 
thinkable. Had  Emerson  been  a  New  Yorker  he 
would  never  have  written  his  advice  to  hitch  your 
wagon  to  a  star ! 

The  lights  of  New  York  began  with  the  Broadway 
lights  of  1679,  and  they  would  seem  to  have  been  some- 
what different  from  the  Broadway  lights  of  today, 
for  they  merely  carried  out  the  orders  of  the  city 
authorities  that  every  seventh  house  should  hang  out 
a  pole  with  a  lantern  and  a  lighted  candle,  on  nights 
when  there  was  no  moon;  and  the  expense  of  this 
elaborate  lighting  was  to  be  divided  among  the  house- 
holders, not  only  of  the  seventh  houses  but  of  the  in- 
termediate sixes  as  well. 

New  York  was  slow  in  coming  to  any  marked  ad- 
vance in  lights.  There  were  for  a  time  merely  more 
lanterns  and  candles,  and  then  there  were  years  of 
oil  (not  coal  oil,  not  kerosene,  but  whale  oil),  and  at 

222 


MIDST  PLEASURES  AND  PALACES 


length  came  gas,  the  first  gaspipe  being  laid  in  Broad- 
way, from  the  Battery  to  Canal  Street,  in  1825. 

With  this  encouragement  New  York  began  to  be, 
for  those  times,  very  brilliant;  and  when  old  Niblo's, 
at  Broadway  and  Prince  Street,  pioneer  as  it  was  in 
vari-colored  lighting,  began  to  dazzle  Broadway  with 
gas  jets  in  red  and  white  and  blue  glass  cups,  strung 
on  an  iron  pipe,  for  the  purpose  of  advertising,  to  the 
street,  the  particular  attraction  of  the  time,  it  was  a 
triumph  indeed.    And  at  length  came  electricity. 

Even  in  the  massed  tenement  streets  the  dwellers 
do  not  know  the  meaning  of  real  darkness.  From 
every  side,  in  every  window,  is  the  glow  of  light.  It 
shines  into  every  room.  It  makes  brilliant  the 
streets.  Even  the  courtyards  are  but  murkily  half 
shadowed. 

But  when  the  lights  of  New  York  are  mentioned  one 
thinks  at  once  and  especially  of  the  brilliant  lights  of 
the  theater  district.  They  are  the  aurora  borealis, 
come  to  Broadway. 

In  a  general  way,  as  I  write,  the  district  of  most 
brilliant  light  is  from  below  34th  Street  to  above 
59th,  with  shoots  of  dazzling  brilliancy  on  some  of  the 
cross  streets.  I  say,  ^ '  as  I  write, ' '  for  it  is  a  chang- 
ing city,  and  in  spite  of  the  cutting  it  in  half  at  Cen- 
tral Park,  may  within  a  few  years  push  its  dazzling 
brilliancy  and  its  theater  crowds  still  farther  up 
Broadway.  The  dazzling  glow  is  one  of  the  sights 
of  the  world.  One  need  not  say  that  it  is  beautiful, 
for  it  is  garish  and  it  is  crude ;  but  it  is  bold  and  strik- 

223 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


ing  and  wonderful.  There  are  the  verve  and  the 
individuality  of  a  city  that  thinks  for  itself. 

The  lights  flare  and  sparkle  and  glow  in  dazzles  of 
electricity,  on  the  fronts  of  buildings,  up  to  the  roofs, 
and  even  far  above  the  roofs  on  great  frameworks. 
There  are  streams  and  lines  and  circles  and  squares 
and  cascades  and  fountains  of  light.  The  lights  are 
infinite  combinations  of  red  and  white  and  green  and 
yellow  and  orange.  And  everywhere  is  the  sense 
and  glow  of  movement,  of  restlessness;  everywhere 
is  the  monstrously  fantastic. 

The  lights  are,  of  course,  advertisements.  They 
exploit  the  claims  of  theaters  and  of  hotels ;  they  de- 
clare the  alleged  merits  of  corsets  and  stockings,  of 
chewing  gum  and  perfumery,  of  whiskies  and  wines, 
of  a  host  of  things.  Huge  flowers,  scores  of  feet  in 
height,  bloom  in  topaz  and  diamond.  A  kilted  High- 
lander, monstrous  in  fifty  or  one  hundred  feet  of 
height,  dances  in  shifting  lines  of  fire.  Monstrous 
squirrels,  of  red  lights,  whirl  constantly  about  within 
monstrous  wheels  of  myriad  lights  of  white.  Butter- 
flies and  birds  of  many  colors,  and  of  size  beyond  that 
of  the  wildest  dream,  flap  their  wings  and  fly.  Can- 
non made  of  lights  fire,  repetitionally,  electric  shots 
which  burst  into  sparkling  words.  And  everywhere 
there  are  brilliant  lines  and  circles  and  squares  and 
masses  of  light,  and  everywhere  the  lights  are  twink- 
ling or  flying  with  a  feverish  haste.  ^^But,"  as  the 
Englishman  demanded,  when  it  was  described  to  him, 
*4sn't  it — ah! — ^very  conspicuous?" 

It  is  very  wonderful,  all  this ;  properly  considered, 

224 


MIDST  PLEASURES  AND  PALACES 


it  is  miraculous;  it  is  power,  it  is  strength,  it  is  ri- 
valry, it  is  achievement,  even  though  it  is  feverish, 
garish,  gaudy,  hectic,  flashing,  pretentious,  ever-rest- 
less— and  is  not  this  great  city  rich  in  all  these  quali- 
ties, desirable  and  undesirable  alike ! 

These  huge  signs,  essentially  dreadful,  essentially 
childish,  are  but  a  natural  phase  of  New  York  devel- 
opment, and  they  will  pass,  as  other  things  have 
passed.  As  recently  as  some  twenty  years  ago  it  was 
customary  to  cover  the  fronts  of  buildings  with  huge 
lettered  signs,  not  in  lights,  but  just  great  plain  signs 
of  lettered  wood  with  the  names  of  firms  and  their 
goods  set  forth  in  the  boldest  ugliness,  and  almost 
entirely  covering  the  unattractive  fronts  of  most  of 
the  business  buildings  of  that  time.  But  a  beautiful 
style  of  building  has  come  in,  and  on  the  best  of  them 
it  has  become  the  New  York  custom  not  to  have  any 
sign  at  all ;  a  stranger  may  seek  in  vain  for  even  the 
name  of  the  firm  itself  on  some  of  the  largest  and  most 
exclusive  buildings  of  to-day ;  and  on  scarcely  any,  ex- 
cept those  concerns  which  cater  to  a  trade  without 
standards,  is  there  more  than  an  inconspicuous  and 
dignified  setting  forth  of  business.  The  era  of  those 
old-time  lettered  signs  has  gone,  and  the  era  of  the 
garish  electric  signs  will  in  time  go. 

The  lights  of  Broadway  shine  on  thronging  streets 
and  sidewalks,  on  the  just  and  on  the  unjust,  on  the 
rich  and  the  poor,  the  real  and  the  rouged,  the  happy 
and  the  miserable,  the  ruler  and  the  ruled — the  fierce 
light  beats,  as  O.  Henry  expressed  it,  upon  the  throne 
and  the  thrown  dowa. 

225 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


And  there  is  a  never-ceasing  roar,  the  mingled 
sound  of  myriad  voices,  of  myriad  feet  on  the  pave- 
ments, of  rattling  street  cars,  of  countless  motors,  the 
mingled  sound  of  chirring,  grinding,  rumbling,  whiz- 
zing, rattling,  roaring,  talking,  laughing — it  is  sight 
and  sound  run  riot ;  it  is  an  orgy. 

The  great  hotels  are  thronged  and  busy  and  the  res- 
taurants crowded  to  the  doors.  Eleven  o'clock 
comes,  and  there  is  not  the  slightest  appearance  of 
sound  or  throng  diminishing;  midnight  comes,  and 
although  there  is  now  some  lessening  of  numbers, 
still  the  dazzling  lights  are  flaring,  still  there  is  a 
ceaseless  tramp  and  surge  on  the  sidewalks,  still  there 
are  hundreds  of  motor-cars  congesting  the  streets  and 
every  few  minutes  held  back  in  long  lines  at  the  cross- 
ings. 

Very  many  of  the  people  have  now  gone  into  the 
restaurants,  for  the  feast  at  midnight  is  beloved 
of  many.  The  people  do  not  want  to  leave  the 
lights. 

Even  the  less  prosperous,  after  an  evening  in  the 
cheaper  seats  at  the  theaters  or  at  the  moving  pic- 
tures are  reluctant  to  leave  Broadway,  and  you  will 
see  them  crowding  into  the  cheaper  restaurants  or 
literally  packing  the  drug  stores  to  revel  economically 
in  undesired  sodas  and  hot  chocolates. 

Thousands  who  wished  to  spend  money,  or  at  least 
to  feel  themselves  a  part  of  the  mad  gayety,  went 
after  midnight  to  the  roof -gardens  and  cabarets,  till 
war  made  closing  rules,  and  sat  at  tables  and  listened 
to  gay  orchestras,  and  watched  pictorially  clad  dan- 

226 


MIDST  PLEASURES  AND  PALACES 


cers,  and  listened  to  the  gayest  of  singing,  and  spent 
money  to  their  heart 's  content. 

The  hectic  night,  the  dazzling  artificiality — how  dif- 
ferent from  the  clear  bright  air  of  the  best  of  New 
York  days!  For  New  York,  in  every  sense,  has  an 
air !  And  its  air  is  crisp,  fresh,  sparkling,  full  of  life 
and  verve,  full  of  power,  of  inspiration. 

And  often,  as  evening  comes  on,  a  wonderful  tender 
purple  light  comes  down  over  the  city;  it  is  a  light 
that  Whistler  would  have  loved  and  which  he  would 
have  spent  his  life  in  painting;  it  is  the  light  that  pre- 
cedes the  dusk  on  a  clear  fair  evening;  it  is  best  ap- 
preciated when  seen  from  an  upper  window  and  in 
facing  the  north;  and  it  enfolds  the  city  in  its  ethereal 
coloring.  The  purple  light  of  a  perfect  New  York 
evening  is  a  thing  sweetly  to  fill  the  imagination  and 
the  memory. 


227 


CHAPTEE  XVIII 

SUPERSTITIONS  OF  THE  CITY 


HEEE  are  so  many  things 
that  point  out  New  York's 
childishness!  The  constant 
deserting  of  streets  to  ad- 
vance to  new  streets,  as 
restless  children  drop  toys 
for  the  mere  sake  of  picking 
up  new  ones,  the  needless 
tearing  down  of  beautiful 
buildings,  just  as  a  naughty 
child  would  tear  a  beautiful 
picture  or  book — this,  too,  is  one  of  the  signs  of  civic 
childishness.  There  was  a  distinguished  Academy 
of  Design  on  East  23d  Street,  a  building  beautiful 
as  well  as  distinguished:  when  it  was  dedicated,  the 
aged  William  Cullen  Bryant,  delivering  the  princi- 
pal address,  felicitated  the  Academy  upon  having 
finally,  after  a  number  of  removals,  obtained  a  per- 
manent home.  Permanent!  Bryant  ought  to  have 
known  his  city  better!  And  there  have  been  the 
great  granite  building  of  the  Lenox  Library,  which 
vanished  from  the  earth ;  the  fascinating  Gothic  halls 
of  the  University  on  Washington  Square;  the  de- 

228 


SUPEESTITIONS  OF  THE  CITY 


serted  Colony  Club  building  on  Madison  Avenue,  so 
exquisite  and  delicate;  Madison  Square  Garden, 
doomed  and  temporarily  reprieved — but  I  shall  not 
itemize  further. 

In  its  extravagance,  its  luxury,  its  expensiveness, 
its  general  carelessness  with  money,  New  York  is 
like  a  child  that  has  not  learned  self-restraint  but 
has  its  pockets  well  filled.  ^*We  put  up  prices  be- 
cause we  know  that  New  Yorkers  will  pay, ' '  cynically 
said  to  me  the  manager  of  a  great  establishment. 

New  York  is  in  the  grasp  of  a  money  madness,  an 
extravagance  of  living,  not  seriously  to  be  checked 
by  the  World  War.  And  this  matter  of  extrava- 
gance brings  to  mind  two  fish  set  in  almost  the  same 
year  before  two  men:  one,  Louis  the  Sixteenth,  the 
other.  President  Washington,  when  his  home  was 
on  Cherry  Hill  in  New  York  City.  At  the  last  pub- 
lic dinner  ever  given  to  Louis  the  Sixteenth  a  special 
dish  was  a  carp  from  the  Ehine  that  for  reasons  of 
scarcity  and  transit  had  cost  two  thousand  livres. 
The  King  barely  tasted  it.  ^^Take  it  away,''  he  said 
with  indifference;  **I  don't  care  for  it."  The  other 
fish  was  an  early  shad  from  the  Delaware  that  had 
cost  four  dollars.  **Take  it  away,"  said  the  Presi- 
dent sternly;  **that  was  too  expensive  to  buy  for 
me."  From  which  it  may  be  seen  that  Washington 
was  not  a  typical  New  Yorker,  even  though  he  was 
living  here,  and  that  Louis  the  Sixteenth  would  have 
taken  naturally  to  the  ways  of  the  New  York  rich. 

Even  as  recently  as  the  beginning  of  this  present 
century,  a  *  ^  silk-stocking  man ' '  was  a  term  implying 

229 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


pernicious  extravagance;  but  for  one  New  Yorker 
who  wore  silk  stockings  then,  at  least  fifty  do  now. 
The  demand  for  silk  stockings  for  women  has  im- 
mensely increased;  ^^whenas  in  silk  my  Julia  goes'' 
has  permeated  all  layers  of  the  social  structure,  and 
none  are  so  humble  as  to  abjure  the  real  or  the  near- 
real  in  hosiery.  One  single  shop  tells  me  that  it  now 
constantly  carries  in  stock  two  hundred  varieties,  in 
size,  quality,  color  and  kind,  in  men's  stockings,  and 
three  hundred  in  women 's ! 

The  city  is  swept  on  by  a  wave  of  extravagance. 
Money  has  been  made  so  largely  and  so  easily  that 
people  have  got  into  the  way  of  spending  it  largely 
and  easily. 

In  what  are  termed  the  fashionable  restaurants, 
which  have  increased  amazingly  in  number  and  ex- 
pensiveness,  the  new  national  spirit  of  spending,  the 
gay  financial  heedlessness  that  makes  things  dear, 
is  markedly  apparent  in  New  York,  where  so  many 
come  to  spend;  for  twenty  times  as  much  money  is 
spent  in  such  restaurants  as  was  spent  ten  years  ago. 
It  is  as  if  the  motto  in  New  York  were  **Eat,  drink 
and  be  merry." 

Rents  in  the  city  have  gone  up  amazingly,  and  peo- 
ple pay  them  with  positive  happiness :  they  feel  that 
it  gives  them  a  touch  of  importance  and  distinction 
to  pay  an  enormous  rent. 

Extravagance  of  spending  is  rampant.  And  yet, 
there  is  also  a  mighty  contrast.  Great  masses  of  the 
citizens  of  this  great  city  toil  and  save :  and  the  total 
deposits  in  the  savings  banks  continue  to  increase. 

230 


SUPEKSTITIONS  OF  THE  CITY 


New  York  is  an  exceedingly  superstitious  city, 
because  of  the  immense  medley  of  races  in  this  poly- 
glot city,  with  the  infinite  variety  of  superstitious 
traditions  and  ramifications  brought  here  from  every 
corner  of  the  earth.  In  this  great  modern  city,  the 
very  embodiment  of  twentieth  century  progress, 
thrives  superstition,  gray  with  countless  centuries 
of  age. 

When  the  night  wind  wails  through  the  gorgelike 
streets  of  the  great  East  Side,  thousands  tremble,  for 
the  restless  cry  is  from  the  souls  of  children  un- 
baptized.  Where  thick-packed  multitudes  mass, 
many  a  charm  is  said  over  the  sick,  many  a  spell  is 
mystically  woven,  even  as  spells  were  whispered  and 
charms  woven  in  the  forests  of  Northern  Europe, 
centuries  ago.  Black  art  has  not  been  banished  by 
the  electric  light.  Myths  hold  their  own  in  spite  of 
the  railroad  and  the  telegraph. 

Not  long  ago  a  quadroon  was  taken  into  court  for 
preying  upon  the  negroes  of  the  Eighth  Avenue  col- 
ony. He  claimed  magic  power,  and  his  arrest  was 
brought  about  by  a  woman  whose  son  remained  ill 
despite  the  virtue  of  three  green  seals  and  a  magic 
belt.  Recently  the  will  of  a  German  woman,  a 
dweller  in  Stanton  Street,  was  disputed  because  she 
had  profoundly  dreaded  witches  and  had  hidden 
throughout  her  clothing  incantations  to  drive  the 
witches  away. 

It  is  seldom  that  the  black  art  of  Manhattan  at- 
tracts the  attention  of  the  law.  To  find  the  terrible 
Slav  who  is  in  league  with  the  devil,  to  find  the  seer 

231 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


who  makes  a  child  proof  against  poison  by  writing 
magic  words,  in  blood,  upon  its  forehead,  to  find 
the  man  who  in  consternation  discovered  skull  and 
crossbones  sewed  upon  his  garment,  to  find  where 
love-philters  may  be  bought,  with  full  instructions  as 
to  their  administration,  one  must  patiently  come  to 
know  the  mankind  of  the  tenements. 

Ghosts  are  told  of  in  the  crowded  region  north  of 
Grand  Street.  There  are  tales  of  demonology  in 
Chinatown.  Almshouse  dwellers,  sitting  in  the  sun, 
watching  the  surging  tide  and  the  glistening  water, 
tell  of  spirits  and  banshees  and  fays. 

Curious  it  is  to  find,  in  Essex  or  Ludlow  Street  or 
East  Broadway,  a  belief  in  Lilith,  the  legendary  first 
wife  of  Adam;  but  among  these  East  Side  women 
who  pronounce  incantations  against  her  she  is  not 
Lilith  as  we  know  her  in  Rosetti,  marvellously  beau- 
tiful and  eternally  young,  snaring  the  souls  of  men 
in  the  meshes  of  her  enchanted  hair,  but  a  malicious 
personification  of  evil,  forever  watching  to  steal  away 
or  injure  the  new-born  child. 

Races  that  never  heard  of  the  predecessor  of  Eve 
share  in  the  fear  that  new-born  children  are  liable  to 
be  stolen  away;  they  hold  that  fairies  are  the  thieves, 
and  that  in  the  stead  of  infants  taken  away  there 
are  changelings,  children  deformed,  the  progeny  of 
gnomes. 

There  are  women  who  cruelly  beat  or  torture  the 
changelings  that  have  been  foisted  upon  them,  for 
they  hope  thus  to  induce  the  child-pilferers,  from 
very  pity  for  the  gnomish  offspring,  to  make  restitu- 

232 


SUPERSTITIONS  OF  THE  CITY 


tion;  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  some  of  the  appar- 
ently inexplicable  cases  of  fierce  wrath  toward  chil- 
dren, on  the  part  of  sullenly  reticent  parents,  ob- 
scurely root  their  motives  in  this  grim  belief. 

Superstition  is  seen,  luminous  in  its  ineradicability, 
in  a  little  book  of  necromancy,  especially  for  the  sick, 
which  is  widely  studied  in  the  tenements.  It  tells 
how  to  make  oneself  invisible,  how  to  become  im- 
pervious to  shot,  how  to  cure  diseases.  That  many 
of  its  rules  demand  incantations  which  it  is  impera- 
tive properly  to  pronounce,  or  that  there  is  desig- 
nated some  strange  substance  for  medicine,  often 
makes  necessary  the  services  of  a  Wise  Woman. 

Magic  words  and  letters  play  their  part  in  these 
dogmas  of  demonology.  The  blood  of  a  basilisk,  a 
black  tick  taken  from  the  left  ear  of  p  cat,  a  stone 
bitten  by  a  mad  dog,  the  right  eye  of  a  live  serpent, 
— such  are  some  of  the  charms  or  medicines. 

If  one  would  be  secure  against  shot,  the  following 
is  infallible;  but  one  sees  why  the  interpretative 
Wise  Woman  must  needs  be  called  in : 

**0  Josophat;  O  Tomosath;  0  PlasorathI  These 
words  pronounce  Jarot  backwards  three  times." 

It  was  through  the  case  of  a  girl  who  was  suffering 
in  a  shabby  little  room  in  a  shabby  tenement  that  I 
came  to  know  of  this  school  of  necromancy  and  of 
the  crass  strength  with  which  it  holds  sway.  The 
girPs  foot  had  been  painfully  crushed,  yet  all  that 
the  mother  was  doing  for  her  was  to  have  a  Wise 
Woman  come  three  times  a  day  and  drone  over  her 
a  conjuration. 

233 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


Yet  the  Wise  Woman  who  droned  the  jargon  over 
the  poor  child's  foot  was  far  from  witehlike  in  ap- 
pearance. Of  middle  age,  shrewd,  impassive,  slow, 
rather  short,  clean,  clad  in  a  plain  black  gown  and 
knitted  shoulder-cape — the  very  commonplaceness  of 
her  appearance  gave  an  additional  tang  of  disquiet. 

It  would  be  a  mistake  to  think  the  superstitions  of 
New  York  obtain  among  the  ignorant  only.  The  rich 
and  the  well-to-do  dread  thirteen  at  table — the  re- 
sult of  a  superstition  which  goes  back  to  the  Last 
Supper,  where  one  was  a  traitor.  In  his  great  paint- 
ing of  the  Supper,  Da  Vinci  illustrates  a  prognostic 
in  which  many  in  Manhattan  have  faith — for  Judas 
has  just  upset  the  salt!  Educated  men  ward  off 
rheumatism  with  horse-chestnuts.  The  Easter-egg 
custom  comes  from  rites  and  beliefs  of  unknown  an- 
tiquity. Many,  in  moving,  will  not  carry  away  a 
broom.  Many  count  it  unlucky  to  take  the  family  cat 
with  them  to  a  new  home.  Many  still  put  horseshoes 
over  their  doors — thus  recognizing  a  superstition 
which  apparently  arose  from  the  warding  away  of 
evil  by  the  horseshoe-shaped  blood-splash  of  the 
Passover.  There  is  a  Wall  Street  broker  who  must 
have  his  right  cheek  shaved  first,  and  the  initial 
stroke  must  be  upward.  A  certain  horse-owner  is 
confident  of  success  if,  on  the  morning  of  a  race-day, 
he  accidentally  meets  a  cross-eyed  man.  Many  a 
New  York  matron  will  under  no  circumstances  re- 
move the  wedding-ring  from  her  finger,  for  dire  ill 
luck  would  come.  A  New  York  financier  whose  name 
is  known  throughout  the  world  holds  active  supersti- 

234 


SUPERSTITIONS  OF  THE  CITY 


tions  in  regard  to  cats.  People  watch  the  placing  of 
valuables  in  a  cornerstone,  without  suspecting  that 
the  custom  is  thought  to  have  a  far-distant  necro- 
mantic origin  in  the  use  of  human  beings  to 
strengthen  buildings  and  bridges.  The  original  be- 
lief still  holds  in  out-of-the-way  corners  of  the  world, 
and  many  of  the  Chinese  believed  the  absurd  report 
that  the  Czar  of  Eussia  was  to  safeguard  the  Man- 
churian  railway  by  means  of  this  ancient  form  of 
black  art. 

The  Italians  have  brought  with  them  the  supersti- 
tions of  Italy,  and  belief  in  demon  possession  and  in 
the  evil  eye  is  wellnigh  universal  among  them.  A 
leading  churchman  was  believed,  by  a  host  of  devout 
Italians,  to  have  the  power  of  the  evil  eye,  though 
none  believed  that  he  ever  wrongfully  used  it;  and 
there  are  men  and  women  in  Roosevelt  and  Elizabeth 
Streets,  about  Mulberry  Bend  and  in  the  Little  Italy 
of  Harlem,  who  are  held  to  be  the  possessors  of  this 
attribute. 

"With  the  Italians  the  very  commonness  of  magic 
has  rendered  imperative  and  customary  a  multitude 
of  counterbalancing  charms,  beginning  with  the 
stringing  of  certain  shapes  of  coral  about  the  necks 
of  children.  And  there  is  a  way  of  so  holding  the 
fingers  as  to  neutralize  the  evil,  the  method  being  to 
fold  the  two  middle  fingers  into  the  palm,  leaving  the 
others  projectively  pronglike. 

A  few  years  ago  an  Italian  vice-consul  went  from 
New  York  to  a  neighboring  town  to  investigate  the 
murder  of  an  Italian  there.    The  slain  man,  it  ap- 

235 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


peared,  had  sold  his  soul  to  the  devil,  and  could  at 
any  time  call  that  personage  to  do  his  bidding.  This, 
not  unnaturally,  had  the  effect  of  minimizing  the 
popularity  of  the  man,  and,  in  fact,  of  raising  up  ene- 
mies against  him.  The  devil,  it  was  learned,  had 
made  his  life  secure  from  steel,  poison,  or  bullets; 
whereupon  certain  hard-headed  compatriots  fell  upon 
him  with  clubs  and  tossed  him  into  a  pond  to 
drown. 

A  curious  epidemic  of  devil  frights,"  which  fol- 
lowed each  other  in  the  schools  of  the  East  Side  a 
few  years  ago,  showed  a  readiness  on  the  part  of  oth- 
ers than  Italians  to  believe  in  the  personal  presence 
of  the  being  that  old  Petrus  Stuyvesant  legendarily 
shot  with  a  silver  bullet  at  Hell  Gate.  Time  and 
again,  while  the  epidemic  lasted,  schoolrooms  were 
emptied  by  a  panic  following  the  cry  that  the  devil 
was  at  the  window. 

Among  many  there  is  a  strange  readiness  of  belief 
that  Christians,  especially  those  of  certain  settlement 
schools,  strive  by  spells  and  branding-marks  to  win 
the  children  of  Hebrews  from  their  faith.  And  one 
evening  I  met  a  Hebrew,  excited  and  eager,  who  told 
me  that  he  had  seen  with  his  own  eyes  the  branding 
on  a  child  who  attended  one  of  these  schools,  and  he 
offered  to  take  me  to  see  it. 

He  led  the  way  to  a  decrepit  rear  tenement  in 
Orchard  Street.  Men  and  women  were  agitatedly 
huddled  in  the  hallway  and  upon  the  shaky  stair,  and 
others  were  crowded  into  an  ill-lit  room  where  a  tall 
man,  broom-bearded  and  gauntly  gaberdined,  was 

236 


SUPEESTITIONS  OF  THE  CITY 


bending  over  a  little  girl,  upon  whose  arm  had  been 
burned  the  letters      O  D  E.'' 

**Iesus  Omnium  Dominus  Est — Jesus  is  the  Lord 
of  all, ' '  interpreted  the  old  man,  gutturally  grim. 

The  little  child,  not  too  little  to  be  proud  of  the  at- 
tention it  was  exciting,  again  told  the  story  of  how  a 

black  man''  had  met  her  in  the  hallway  of  the  settle- 
ment school,  and  had  seared  the  marks  with  a  hot 
iron ;  and  at  that  the  room  was  filled  anew  with  quer- 
ulous Yiddish. 

Yet  the  explanation  was  in  the  adjoining  room, 
where  a  hot  fire  burned  in  a  cooking-stove;  for  the 
door  of  the  stove,  upon  which  was  the  word 
0  D  E  L,"  was  the  branding-iron.  All  of  the 
word  had  been  burned  upon  the  child's  arm  except 
the  *  ^  L  "  and  the  first  three  strokes  of  the  *  ^  M. "  The 
girPs  brother  had  pushed  her  against  the  stove,  and 
had  so  frightened  her  with  threats  that  she  had  feared 
to  tell.  "With  the  stoicism  of  the  poor,  she  had  suf- 
fered in  silence  for  a  while ;  and  then  the  mother,  dis- 
covering the  burn,  had  leaped  at  once  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  this  was  the  dreaded  branding  of  which  she 
had  often  heard,  and  the  neighborhood  had  been 
thrown  into  profound  excitement. 

To  understand  how  oddly  it  came  about,  print  the 
letters  0  D  E"  on  a  piece  of  paper;  lay  the  paper, 
with  the  ink  wet,  against  another,  and  you  will  see 
the  four  letters  reversed;  turn  the  slip  around,  as  the 
brand  would  appear  looking  down  upon  it  on  the  arm, 
and  you  will  read  the  letters  in  their  order, 
^^lODE." 

237 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


Where  all  the  continents  pour  their  mingling  hu- 
man tides — in  those  thick-populated  parts  where 
silent  Greeks  smoke  their  long-tubed  water-pipes, 
where  turbaned  Hindus  bend  above  their  rugs,  where 
Lithuanian  and  Pole,  Armenian  and  Swiss,  Austrian, 
Scandinavian,  and  Slav,  throng  together — there  are 
many  strange  beliefs.  And  far  down  along  the  East 
Eiver,  where  great  bowsprits  stretch  far  over  South 
Street,  where  there  are  casks  and  bales  and  endless 
rope  and  chain,  you  may  hear  in  ancient  taverns,  nod- 
ding dreamily  toward  the  water,  marvelous  tales 
from  them  that  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships,  for  these 
weather-beaten  men  retain  belief  in  ancient  sailors' 
lore. 

Down  in  Mott  Street,  where  gleaming  lanterns 
swing  from  the  balconies,  where  the  smell  of  incense 
is  in  the  air,  where  joss-sticks  burn  and  sallow-faced 
men  bow  before  the  figured  idol,  there  is  unques- 
tioned belief  in  fiends  and  devils,  in  magic  and  in 
spells.  The  silent,  watchful  men  seldom  speak  to 
you;  those  who  know  English  are  apt  to  shake  their 
heads,  and  to  do  business  in  abbreviations,  backed  up 
by  signs ;  but  now  and  then  one  is  found  who,  if  his 
Eastern  soul  opens,  will  tell  you  strange  tales  of 
things  unseen. 

And  I  remember  the  case  of  Lee  Gull.  He  is  dead, 
and  he  died  because  he  was  possessed  by  devils;  at 
least  that  is  what  the  Chinamen  of  Mott  Street  firmly 
believe.  He  had  planned  to  start  for  China  on  a 
certain  day:  instead,  he  was  taken  on  that  day  to  the 
morgue. 

238 


SUPERSTITIONS  OF  THE  CITY 


Lee  Gull  was  far  from  being  a  handsome  man.  He 
was  stoop-shouldered  from  a  life  of  toil  at  the  ironing 
table,  and  his  cunning  face  was  creased  with  a 
myriad  of  wrinkles.  His  almond  eyes  blinked  with 
an  elusive  sleepiness.  His  fingers  were  long  and 
claw-like,  as  if  made  to  grasp  money;  and,  indeed, 
they  were  typical  of  his  character,  for  in  the  thirteen 
years  that  he  had  lived  in  this  country  he  had  gath- 
ered enough  money  to  support  him  in  China  in  afflu- 
ence. 

Devils  paid  him  a  visit.  They  told  him  to  dress 
himself  in  his  holiday  attire  and  go  out  on  Mott 
Street.  That  is  the  story  that  he  solemnly  told  and 
that  his  countrymen  believed.  He  put  on  a  black 
cap,  gayly  tasseled,  and  a  plum-colored  tunic  of  silk, 
woven  with  green  dragons,  and  a  pair  of  wide  trous- 
ers of  blue  satin,  and  shoes  of  silk,  with  soles  of  felt. 
Lee  Gull  believed  that  the  shadow  of  death  was  upon 
him  because  of  the  appearance  of  the  devils,  but  he 
made  no  sign  of  fear.  He  plunged  madly  into  the 
dissipation  of  Chinatown,  for  he  wanted  to  be  happy 
as  long  as  the  devils  would  let  him.  Chinese  phi- 
losophy accepts  death  as  a  natural  incident  that  is 
not  to  be  greatly  feared. 

But  his  almond  eyes  took  on  a  strange  glare,  for 
they  were  peering  into  an  eternity,  that  he  felt  was 
close  at  hand.  To  a  friend,  he  said  that  he  had  again 
been  visited  by  the  devils,  and  that  they  directed  him 
to  go  to  a  certain  house,  wherein  another  Chinaman 
had  died,  and  to  break  in  the  closed  door  and  go  to 
sleep.    He  knew  that  the  soul  of  that  dead  man  would 

239 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


come  for  him,  but  unresistingly  he  obeyed  the  order 
of  Fate.  He  went  to  the  house,  broke  in  the  door,  lay 
down,  and  death  came  lonelily  to  him  just  as  he  had 
foreseen. 


240 


CHAPTER  XIX 


STREETS  AND  WAYS 

LIKE  to  think  that  Nassau  Street — 
named,  like  William  Street  adjoining, 
from  William  the  Third — was  origin- 
ally the  Street  of  the  Pye  Woman,  and 
that  prosaic  Exchange  Alley  was  in  the 
long  ago  Oyster  Patty  Alley,  for  such 
gastronomic  names  raise  gastronomic 
fancies  of  the  good  old  days.  And 
some,  lamenting  the  passing  of  any- 
thing of  the  past,  even  regret  that  Tin 
Pot  Alley  and  Shinbone  Alley  have 
vanished  from  the  street  nomenclature 
of  New  York. 
New  York  has  still  its  Pearl  Street,  dating  from 
early  Dutch  days,  and  its  Whitehall  Street  has  come 
down  from  the  White  Hall  which  Governor  Stuyve- 
sant  built  there,  and  Stone  Street  is  to  be  forever 
reminiscent  of  the  fact  that  it  was  the  first  New  York 
Street  to  be  paved  with  stone,  the  time  being  in  the 
late  1600 's. 

The  city  did  away  altogether,  or  nearly  so,  with 
street  names  remindful  of  English  royalty,  and  it 
took  a  fair  proportion  of  American  names,  such  as 

241 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


Washington,  Franklin,  Madison,  Monroe,  Hamilton, 
and  it  kept  some  that  came  from  old  Dutch  families, 
such  as  Coenties,  Eoosevelt,  Stuyvesant,  Bleecker, 
and  it  kept  that  elusive  little  thoroughfare,  Dutch 
Street,  but  as  it  expanded  it  adopted  the  numbering 
system,  which  thenceforth  did  away  with  colorful  or 
charming  possibilities. 

New  York  has  been  frugal  with  its  street  names. 
Not  only  is  there  Broadway,  but  East  Broadway  and 
West  Broadway;  then  there  are  Park  Row  and  Park 
Street  and  Park  Avenue  and  Park  Place;  and  there 
are  many  more  examples,  such  as  Madison  Street  and 
Madison  Avenue,  Greenwich  Street  and  Greenwich 
Avenue. 

One  of  the  unexplainable  minor  mysteries  of  New 
York  is  in  reference  to  this  very  Greenwich  Avenue, 
for,  before  the  Revolution,  a  monument  was  placed 
here  by  admirers  of  General  Wolfe,  of  Quebec  fame : 
the  monument  being  of  stone  and  not  lead,  it  offered 
no  temptation  for  bullet  making,  and  Wolfe  was  pop- 
ular and  continued  to  be  so,  here  in  America:  yet 
that  monument  completely  vanished  away,  and  no  ex- 
planation has  ever  been  found  as  to  what  could  have 
become  of  it. 

It  was  a  well-known  landmark,  too,  which  makes  its 
disappearance  the  more  strange.  Washington,  when 
President,  and  living  in  New  York,  set  down  in  his 
diary  that  one  of  his  favorite  drives  with  Mrs.  Wash- 
ington, out  from  the  city,  was  to  this  avenue,  then  a 
country  lane,  and  around  the  Wolfe  monument, 
where  he  usually  turned  homeward. 

242 


STREETS  AND  WAYS 


There  are  two  ways  of  looking  at  the  New  York 
streets.  Seen  from  a  lofty  window  or  the  top  of  a 
great  office  building,  they  are  deep  and  narrow  can- 
yons of  great  length :  I  do  not  know  of  anything  in 
any  other  city  even  approaching  this  almost  startling 
effect,  except  the  view  down  into  the  deep  and  nar- 
row streets  of  Naples  from  the  great  height  of  the 
monastery  of  San  Martino.  Seen  from  the  pave- 
ments, the  New  York  streets  are  likewise  canyons: 
and  the  winds  that  go  sweeping  through  them  are 
frequently  fierce  canyon-like  winds. 

The  buildings  rise  to  such  terrific  heights  in  story 
after  story,  and  their  foundations  go  down  to  such 
great  depths,  in  story  below  story,  that  a  French- 
man declared  that  New  York  was  always  torn  up 
with  buildings  rising  to  heaven  and  excavations  go- 
ing down  to  hell. 

A  large  proportion  of  the  streets  of  New  York  are 
always  so  rough  and  torn  up  as  to  give  the  impres- 
sion of  a  frontier  town,  with  everything  raw,  rough 
and  incomplete: — and,  after  all,  this  is  a  frontier 
town,  a  town  on  the  frontier  of  Europe,  taking  in  and 
assimilating  countless  thousands  of  strangers  unac- 
quainted with  our  institutions  and  needing  to  be 
trained  in  the  very  basis  of  our  citizenship. 

Always  one  comes  back  to  the  idea  that  New 
Yorkers  are  not  born  but  made:  they  are  not  born 
New  Yorkers,  but  make  themselves  New  Yorkers: 
broadly  speaking,  those  who  do  not  come  here  from 
Europe — and  78.6  per  cent,  are  from  Europe  or  of 
immediate  European  extraction — come  here  from 

243 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


the  East  or  the  South  or  the  West  of  our  own 
land. 

New  York  is  a  city  of  transplanted  families.  It 
is  a  city  where  State  societies  flourish.  The  Penn- 
sylvania or  Ohio  Society  dinner,  the  New  England 
and  California  gatherings — if  they  were  all  held  on 
one  night  how  few  New  Yorkers  would  be  dining  at 
home! 

The  **home  town''  is  not  New  York,  for  most  of 
the  American-born  who  live  here,  and  allegiance  is 
often  shown  to  the  old  home  when  death  comes,  for 
a  great  proportion  of  the  notices  mention  burial  in 
some  distant  place.  This  accounts,  I  think,  for  the 
comparatively  small  importance  of  the  modern  ceme- 
teries for  the  dwellers  in  Manhattan. 

The  streets  of  New  York  are  such  busy  and  such 
crowded  streets!  One  thinks  of  the  Kentucky  girl 
who,  at  her  first  sight  of  a  sidewalk  throng,  thought 
that  the  mail  must  have  just  come  in.  In  a  street- 
ear  I  heard,  one  day,  a  little  girl  say  to  her  father, 
'*But  what  are  so  many  people  in  the  street  forf 
And  if  one  could  only  tell  it  all,  what  romance  and 
what  tragedy  there  would  be,  what  sorrow  and  what 
happiness,  what  touches  of  the  dramatic  along  with 
the  inevitable  commonplace! 

Among  the  business  signs  on  New  York  streets  one 
sees  the  cryptic,  Skeletons  for  Ladies  and  Gents/' 
or  wonders,  noticing  Young  Housekeepers  Sup- 
plied," what  they  are  supplied  with  or  whether 
the  supply  is  of  young  housekeepers  themselves. 

Black  eyes  painted"  is  not  the  sign  of  the  beauty 

244 


STEEETS  AND  WAYS 


shop;  and  of  course  there  are  the  absurdities  of 
Shoes  blacked  inside/'  and  *^ Funerals  supplied/' 
and  *^01d  Bows  rehaired'' — and,  as  if  for  the  would- 
be  clever  ones,  *^Good  retorts;  new  and  second- 
hand ' ' :  and  what  a  rushing  business  that  place  would 
do  if  it  could  really  furnish  good  and  original  re- 
torts ! 

Over  one  door  I  noticed  the  brave  words :  *'If  you 
want  it  in  wood  I'll  make  it";  there  are  such  signs  as 
^^Connorized  music,"  and  Brushes  for  advertis- 
ing, ' '  and  ' '  Paragon  Pants  Are  Art ' ' :  and  the  sign  of 
*^This  is  the  life,"  may  presumably  be  taken  as  an 
invitation  to  enter  a  place  of  amusement.  There  are 
signs  in  as  many  languages  as  there  are  races  in  this 
polyglot  town:  even  Greek  is  common  on  such  a 
street  of  general  use  and  traffic  as  Sixth  Avenue. 

On  Sixth  Avenue,  at  the  corner  of  4th  Street,  is  an 
interesting  sign,  a  reminder  and  memorial  of  long 
ago,  the  figure  of  a  golden  swan  projecting  in  front 
of  the  corner  of  an  oldish  building — the  only  figure 
sign  that  I  remember,  at  present,  in  the  city,  al- 
though a  few  years  ago  there  were  two  or  three  oth- 
ers, such  as  a  Moor's  head  over  a  drug  shop  on  the 
East  Side,  and  a  great  gilded  bunch  of  grapes  at 
the  old  Grape  Vine  at  Sixth  Avenue  and  11th  Street. 

But  as  I  write  there  comes  the  memory  of  another 
figure  sign,  although  it  isn't  really  a  sign,  after  all. 
It  is  the  figure  of  a  saint,  of  a  black  saint  on  the  front 
of  a  Roman  Catholic  Church  on  West  53d  Street,  the 
figure,  as  the  dusky  brothers  and  sisters  of  the  par- 
ish, unctuously  proud  that  a  black  man  was  a  saint 

245 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


of  the  Church,  will  tell  you,  of  *^Sam'  Benedick'  de 
Mooh'M 

Because  the  street  traffic  is  of  greater  volume  than 
in  other  cities,  there  are  swifter  moving  motor-cars 
to  obviate  the  always  threatened  congestion ;  and  the 
type  of  driver  is  more  capable,  more  alert;  and  the 
traffic  officers  are  obeyed  as  swiftly  and  as  completely 
as  the  much-talked-of  English  policemen  of  the 
Strand. 

The  number  of  people  who  are  on  the  streets  is  so 
vast,  and  such  great  numbers  are  foreigners  of  the 
ignorant  types  who  have  so  largely  come  within  re- 
cent years,  and  the  tenement  and  apartment-house 
living  puts  such  numbers  of  children  on  the  streets, 
that,  with  such  totals  as  there  are  of  vehicles  and 
of  people,  accidents  are  many.  From  twenty- 
one  to  twenty-three  thousand  people  are  hurt,  on  the 
streets  of  Greater  New  York,  every  year,  and  more 
than  a  quarter  of  the  number  are  hurt  by  automo- 
biles. Of  the  total  injured,  from  six  to  eight  hun- 
dred are  injured  fatally. 

In  New  York,  old  customs  have  almost  vanished. 
New  Year's  calling,  that  pretty  New  York  custom 
which  came  from  the  Dutch,  and  which  President 
Washington  hoped  to  see  kept  up  forever,  has  van- 
ished from  here  as  from  the  cities  which  imitatingly 
adopted  it:  and  almost  every  other  old  custom  has 
also  gone.  But  sugar  is  still  most  commonly  sold  in 
three-and-a-half -pound  lots :  a  strange  unit  of  weight, 
one  thinks,  until  he  finds  that  it  is  a  survival  of  the 

stone,"  this  being  a  quarter  of  a  stone;  and  eggs 

246 


STREETS  AND  WAYS 


are  still  sold,  in  some  of  the  smaller  shops,  at  so 
many  for  a  quarter,  instead  of  for  so  much  a  dozen. 
The  knife-and-scissors  grinder  may  still  be  seen,  go- 
ing about  with  his  grindstone  with  its  two  wheels 
and  two  stopping  pegs ;  the  street-organs  and  street- 
pianos,  which  only  a  few  years  ago  were  common, 
and  to  whose  music  little  circles  of  girls  loved  pret- 
tily to  dance  on  the  pavement,  have  been  mostly 
frowned  and  licensed  away,  and  no  longer  do  the 
paper-wrapped  nickels  and  pennies  fall  like  the  gen- 
tle dew  from  heaven  out  of  the  upper  stories  of  tene- 
ments. 

The  streets  are  noisy  in  the  extreme:  many  are 
even  thunderously  noisy:  and  the  general  voice  is 
in  consequence  harsh  and  shrill. 

Motor  trucks  have  not  entirely  displaced  horse- 
drawn  trucks,  but  the  old-time  horses  and  carriages  of 
pleasure,  the  old-fashioned  family  carriages  or  bug- 
gies or  runabouts,  are  so  seldom  seen  in  Manhattan 
as  to  compel  a  second  look  when  they  pass  by.  With 
the  disappearance  of  the  horse  and  carriage,  there 
has  also  come  about  the  practical  disappearance  of 
the  hand-pushed  baby  carriage!  Manhattan  has 
seen  practically  the  last  of  it.  In  the  tenement  dis- 
tricts, where  the  children  swarm  by  tens  of  thou- 
sands, where  babies  litter  the  sidewalks,  there  are 
practically  no  baby  carriages,  for  there  is  no  room 
for  them.  A  few  babies  in  carriages  are  still  to  be 
seen  in  some  of  the  uptown  parks,  hovering  there 
like  j3uttered  birds  in  a  refuge.  In  some  well-to-do 
sections,  the  baby  carriage  has  disappeared  because 

247 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 

there  are  no  babies.  The  very  wealthy  enjoy,  to 
some  degree,  the  luxury  of  babies,  but  with  them  the 
motor-car  and  not  the  baby  carriage  is  used  for  air- 
ings, or  the  baby  is  carried  by  a  highly  uniformed 
nurse. 

So  unusual  is  a  baby  carriage  in  a  rich  section,  that 
it  assumes  instant  importance  when  it  does  appear, 
and  recently  the  question  of  whether  or  not,  in  a  so- 
called  fashionable  apartment  house,  a  family  should 
be  permitted  to  wheel  the  baby  out  of  the  front  door, 
occupied  the  attention  of  one  of  the  Supreme  Courts 
for  day  after  day. 

New  York,  city  of  tenements  and  apartment  houses 
that  it  is,  possesses  a  Janitors '  Society,  and  the  sjma- 
bol  of  the  association  is,  naturally  and  proudly, 
crossed  keys  and  a  broom. 

In  a  growing  degree,  there  has  come  a  natural 
transition,  for  many  New  Yorkers,  from  apartment 
houses  to  apartment  hotels.  Fewer  wives  appear  at 
breakfast  with  their  husbands.  It  is  too  much 
trouble  to  keep  house.  The  dweller  in  an  apartment 
hotel  escapes  the  servant  problem,  escapes  the 
plumber  and  the  coal  man,  does  not  have  to  bother 
about  house-heating  or  burglars,  about  beggars, 
agents,  process-servers,  undesirable  callers  of  any 
sort.  Life  is  thus  made  more  simple  and  at  the  same 
time  more  lavish.  For  such  results,  many  a  New 
Yorker  leads  a  pigeon-hole  existence  and  sleeps  in  a 
room  so  small  that  he  must  hold  his  elbows  in.  Many 
a  seeming  duchess  in  the  bright  light  of  restaurant 
life  has  not  where  to  lay  her  headgear  and  must  keep 

248 

1 


STREETS  AND  WAYS 


her  hats  under  her  bed.  And  this  adds  to  the  number 
of  gay  diners-out,  the  restaurant  diners  in  public 
places. 

The  great  amount  of  extravagant  dining-out,  in 
New  York,  accounts  for  the  absence,  or  at  least  the 
great  shortage,  of  fine  pastry  and  ice  cream  supply 
shops,  such  as  abound  in  Philadelphia  and  Boston. 
Nor  are  meat  and  game  markets  numerous,  of  the 
kind  that  cater  to  wealthy  living.  Wealthy  homes, 
whether  separate  houses  or  apartments,  which  still 
do  most  of  their  own  cooking,  are  comparatively  few 
and  growing  fewer,  and  the  hotels  and  famous  res- 
taurants and  clubs  have  wholesale  supply  houses  and 
sources  of  food  that  are  not  in  retail  evidence. 

No  other  city  of  the  world  has  so  many  great 
stores,  huge  department  stores,  for  retail  trade,  as 
New  York  City.  At  the  same  time,  street  after  street 
is  full  of  tiny  little  places  of  trade,  offering  myriad 
kinds  of  merchandise  to  the  small  buyers.  This  is 
largely  because  the  great  stores  close  at  half-past 
five  or  six,  partly  because  many  poor  people  feel 
that  they  are  not  welcome  in  the  palatial  stores,  and 
to  quite  an  extent  because  hosts  of  people  do  not  live 
very  near  the  department  stores ;  although  I  remem- 
ber hundreds  of  little  shops,  apparently  prosperous, 
within  a  very  few  blocks  of  the  great  places. 

There  are  a  great  number  of  picturesque  little 
shops,  reached,  perhaps,  by  going  down  basement 
steps,  or  up  passageways,  the  shops  of  expert  arti- 
sans of  idiosyncrasies,  oldish  men,  of  foreign  birth, 
who  work  in  wood  or  metals.    And  there  are  great 

249 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


shedlike  places,  far  over  at  the  western  edge  of  Man- 
hattan and  far  over  at  the  eastern,  where  you  may- 
buy  any  kind  of  wreckage  from  destroyed  buildings ; 
doors  and  windows,  cornices,  pillars,  mantelpieces. 

I  think  that  it  is  not  realized  to  what  an  extent 
people  are  constantly  scattering,  away  from  New 
York;  that  it  is  not  just  a  matter  of  coming  here. 
The  whirling  city  exerts  not  only  centripetal  force 
but  centrifugal.  The  disappointed,  disillusioned, 
dispirited  are  constantly  giving  up  the  struggle; 
many  others  depart,  not  because  of  failure  or  ill- 
health,  but  because  they  think  they  see  a  particular 
success  in  some  other  place.  But  although  the  out- 
going movement  is  always  strong  it  is  far  from 
equaling  the  incoming. 

New  York  exerts  a  tremendous  appeal  upon  the 
ambitious  and  the  restless;  and  markedly,  therefore, 
it  has  been  drawing  to  itself  the  newest  of  the  **new 
women.''  And  here  the  **new  woman''  is  a  sign  and 
a  symbol  of  change,  contending,  in  the  everyday  as- 
pects of  her  life,  for  what  she  deems  desirable  free- 
dom, deeming  social  guards  to  be  but  old-fashioned 
restrictions,  considering  herself  her  own  best  pro- 
tector. In  Boston,  the  **new  woman"  is  self-pos- 
sessed, busily  occupied,  competent,  looking  on  eman- 
cipation as  giving  the  chance  for  independent  work, 
and  extremely  glad  to  run  back  home  over  Sunday. 
In  New  York  the  **new  woman"  is  to  a  great  extent 
a  very  young  woman  indeed,  probably  just  out  of  col- 
lege, and  she  much  prefers  to  take  a  bachelor-girl 
apartment  and  consider  father  and  mother  and  home 

250 


STREETS  AND  WAYS 


a  closed  issue.  There  are,  of  course,  many  excep- 
tions; but  the  Boston  type,  deeming  a  visit  home  a 
privilege,  and  the  New  York  most  prominent  type, 
deeming  home  a  place  from  which  to  escape,  stand  as 
the  representatives  of  an  important  movement. 

New  York  real  estate  is  supposed  to  be  among  the 
very  best  possible  of  investments,  a  sure  thing  in  an 
investment  world  of  uncertainties,  the  only  question 
being  as  to  the  amount  of  profit. 

And  New  York  has  undoubtedly  given  many  a  man 
millions,  and  the  story  of  one  of  the  early  invest- 
ments of  John  Jacob  Astor  is  illustrative.  He  sold 
a  lot  on  Wall  Street  for  eight  thousand  dollars,  and 
after  the  sale  was  completed  the  purchaser  said  with 
a  smile  of  triumph  that  he  had  secured  a  bargain,  for 
in  a  few  years  he  would  be  able  to  sell  that  lot  for 
twelve  thousand  dollars,  whereupon  Astor  replied: 
**Yes,  but  with  your  eight  thousand  dollars  I  shall 
buy  eighty  lots  above  Canal  Street  which,  when  your 
lot  is  worth  twelve  thousand  dollars,  will  be  worth 
eighty  thousand  dollars."   And  they  were. 

But  although  there  may  be  profit  and  although 
there  has  often  been  very  great  profit,  there  may  be 
stagnation  or  even  heavy  loss.  The  very  chances  of 
business  and  of  living  that  pile  up  huge  fortunes  for 
some,  tear  down  the  fortunes  of  others.  Many  a 
business  block,  giving  a  splendid  income  for  years, 
finds  its  revenue  so  falling  off  that  it  is  sold  for  its 
mortgage  and  fetches  far  less  than  the  mortgage. 
Many  a  once  prosperous  apartment  house  has  seen 
its  rents  dwindle  to  less  than  interest  and  taxes. 

251 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


Many  a  house  is  deemed  not  worth  the  cost  of  altera- 
tions, and  in  its  fall  in  value  drags  down  its  neigh- 
bors. Only  recently  the  owners  of  an  apartment 
house  looking  out  over  Washington  Square  decided, 
rather  than  meet  some  looming  expenses,  to  turn  it 
into  a  loft  building  for  light  manufacturing — an  ap- 
palling possibility  for  one  of  the  most  charming  quar- 
ters of  New  York.  In  this  case  disaster  was  averted 
because  of  great  improvements  near  by,  which  re- 
vived residential  values. 

Scattered  through  old  New  York  are  many  build- 
ings which  are  shabby  and  gloomy,  out  of  repair  and 
perhaps  half  closed  and  half  used.  The  curious  fact 
in  regard  to  many  of  them  is  that  they  belong  to 
lost  heirs  or  have  a  title  tied  up  by  litigation.  Such 
facts  explain  some  shabby  blocks  of  tenements  and 
some  haunted  houses."  These  old  estates  stand 
unimproved,  with  no  available  money  to  put  new 
buildings  on  the  land  and  with  no  prospective  pur- 
chaser desirous  of  **buying  a  lawsuit." 

New  York  has  always  been  a  city  of  costly  living. 
The  dashing  Knox,  passing  through  New  York  in 
1775  on  his  way  to  Crown  Point  and  Ticonderoga  for 
guns  for  Boston,  notes  in  his  diary  that  he  is  **glad 
to  leave  New  York,  it  being  very  expensive."  And 
it  seems  to  be  illustrative  of  New  York  that,  just 
the  other  day,  when  one  of  the  banks  moved  its  offices 
from  one  building  to  another  a  block  and  a  half  away, 
it  took  out,  to  cover  possible  loss  in  transit  of  money 
or  securities,  an  insurance  policy,  for  twenty-four 
hours,  for  the  sum  of  ninety  millions  of  dollars. 

252 


STREETS  AND  WAYS 


New  York  has  a  rich  class  who  feel  no  sense  of 
noblesse  oblige  in  regard  to  the  poor  of  the  city.  To 
them  the  poor  are  aliens  and  strangers.  There  is  no 
bond  of  having  grown  up  together,  of  even  the  fore- 
fathers of  one  class  having  worked  for  the  forebears 
of  the  other,  of  both  classes  having  mutually  looked 
on  at  the  development  of  the  city.  The  two  classes 
do  not  know  each  other.  The  rich  stay  in  their  part 
of  the  city  and  the  poor  stay  in  theirs,  and  there  is 
no  harmony  or  happiness  common  to  them. 

And  I  think  this  is  shown,  with  peculiar  clearness, 
in  the  attitude  of  the  well-to-do  New  Yorker  toward 
the  city  itself  in  the  hot  summer  months.  He  is  him- 
self away  all  summer  if  he  can  manage  it,  and  at 
least  for  a  long  vacation;  and,  besides  the  vacation, 
he  either  runs  out  of  the  city  every  night  during  the 
hot  term  or  at  least  every  week-end,  dividing  his 
enforced  time  in  the  city  between  his  office  and  his 
club:  to  him,  the  city  is  closed  up'':  nobody  is  at 
home :  he  is  absolutely  sincere  in  his  belief.  Yet  he  is 
quite  mistaken,  for  New  York's  toiling  millions  are 
still  there ! 

In  the  matter  of  actual  charity  New  York  is  gen- 
erous. No  city  in  the  world  gives  so  much  and  so 
freely.  There  are  enormous  hospitals  given  by  in- 
dividual wealth  or  built  by  the  city;  there  are  huge 
charitable  institutions  in  infinite  variety;  every- 
where that  one  looks  or  walks  there  is  some  chari- 
table building  with  millions  of  an  endowment.  There 
is,  too,  an  increasing  centralization  of  giving,  under 
the  name  of  efficiency.    Yet  the  fact  remains  that 

253 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


poverty  does  not  decrease,  in  spite  of  the  increase  of 
charity.  In  any  other  line  of  activity  such  a  fact 
would  be  looked  upon  as  a  condenmation  of  methods. 
Any  business  man  facing  a  condition  of  increased  ex- 
penditure without  increased  results  would  set  him- 
self to  some  kind  of  change. 

There  seems  to  be  no  doubt  that  more  than  half  a 
million  people  in  Greater  New  York  are  recipients  of 
some  form  of  charity. 

One  of  the  most  notable  charities  is  Sailors'  Snug 
Harbor,  whose  founder.  Captain  Richard  Randall, 
gave  a  great  acreage,  northeast  of  Washington 
Square,  a  little  over  a  century  ago,  to  be  adminis- 
tered for  the  benefit  of  a  home  for  old  American 
sailors.  The  land  is  never  to  be  sold,  but  rented; 
the  property  has  become  so  valuable  that  more  than 
seven  hundred  old  sailors  are  cared  for  from  the  in- 
come, in  the  buildings  of  the  Snug  Harbor,  which  are 
great  dignified  pillar-fronted  structures,  on  Staten 
Island,  looking  out  over  the  water  of  the  Kill  van 
Kull :  and  in  founding  the  bequest  the  donor  directed 
that  the  sailors  should  never  be  deemed  paupers,  but 
his  heirs. 

There  is  an  organization  that  sends  libraries  to 
sea  on  ships ;  another  was  founded  to  relieve  victims 
of  shipwreck;  another  is  restricted  to  the  care  of 
needy  sailors  of  the  vanishing,  full-rigged,  ocean- 
going ships ! 

One  society  furnishes  *  ^foster  housewives,"  to 
scrub  floors,  wash  dishes,  wash  and  dress  the  chil- 
dren, when  mothers  are  sick.    Another  gives  vaca- 

254 


STREETS  AND  WAYS 


tions  to  nurses,  teachers  and  governesses"  in  need 
of  them.  Another  gives  outings  to  little  girls  whose 
mothers  give  them  the  care  of  littler  ones. 

A  fund  was  established,  far  back  in  1798,  and  is 
still  administered,  for  the  benefit  of  industrious 
widows  of  good  character,  with  at  least  two  children 
under  the  age  of  twelve ;  the  widows,  so  it  is  carefully 
specified,  not  to  be  totally  destitute  but  able  to  aid 
somewhat  in  their  own  support. 

One  philanthropist  specializes  in  filling  the  uncon- 
ventional want:  the  pair  of  shoes,  the  glass  eye,  the 
pair  of  spectacles,  the  set  of  teeth.  Which  is  remind- 
ful that  New  York  dentists  are  often  asked  to  buy 
the  gold  fillings  out  of  the  teeth  of  hard-luck  unfor- 
tunates. 

At  the  southern  edge  of  Greeley  Square,  on  33d 
Street  near  Broadway,  is  an  unobtrusive  fountain 
(its  existence  threatened,  when  last  I  noticed  it,  by 
subway  work),  to  the  memory  of  Jerry  McAuley, 
who  founded,  in  1872,  near  the  waterside,  between 
Cherry  Hill  and  the  East  Eiver,  a  mission  which  is 
continuing  the  noble  work  that  he  nobly  began,  that 
of  helping  those  who  are  absolutely  down  and  out, 
men  and  women  who  are  hungry,  who  have  perhaps 
been  criminals,  who  are  probably  drunkards.  Mc- 
Auley had  himself  been  down  and  out,  and  he  knew 
the  needs  of  those  who  could  not  qualify  as  respect- 
able and  sober  citizens. 

A  little  west  of  Broadway,  in  the  vicinity  of  Canal 
Street,  is  a  barbers '  school :  and  as  the  students  must 
practice,  and  can  scarcely  charge  for  practicing,  they 

255 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


cut  hair,  and  shave,  free  of  charge :  and  a  pitiful  line 
of  men  wait  their  turn,  men  literally  without  a  cent, 
many  of  them,  and  all  without  a  cent  to  spare :  and 
almost  more  pitiful  than  to  see  the  waiting  line  is  to 
see  the  new  life  and  hope  with  which  the  men,  fur- 
bished and  rejuvenated,  step  out  again  into  a  world 
that  would  not  hire  them  unkempt  and  unshaven. 

That  is  domg  good,  without  being  in  the  least  a 
charity.  And  as  to  other  good  that  is  done  without 
ostentation  and  not  in  the  least  as  charity,  I  look  on 
the  tallest  building  of  the  city — the  tallest  of  the 
world — as  the  finest  of  exemplars,  for  it  was  built 
by  the  man  who,  in  his  vast  series  of  stores,  sells 
things  for  five  and  ten  cents,  making  it  possible  for 
those  of  straitened  means  to  buy,  with  self-respect, 
many  a  needful  thing  which  they  would  otherwise 
have  to  do  without. 

On  East  68th  Street  are  the  buildings  of  what  is 
among  the  sweetest  and  most  beautiful  of  all  chari- 
ties. It  is  the  New  York  Foundling  Hospital,  and, 
as  its  name  implies,  it  receives  children  who  have  no 
parents,  children  whose  parents  cannot  or  will  not 
care  for  them,  hapless  and  helpless  infants,  victims 
of  poverty  or  crime. 

The  Foundling  Hospital  began  modestly  in  1869 
down  on  East  12th  Street,  and  the  first  infant  was 
left  on  the  opening  day  about  dusk,  and  was  sur- 
veyed with  wonder  and  pity  by  the  Sisters,  who  in- 
stantly decided  that  it  should  be  called  Joseph  Vin- 
cent, in  honor  of  St.  Vincent  de  Paul,  the  special 
patron  of  forgotten  infants :  and  their  disappointment 

256 


STREETS  AND  WAYS 


was  great  to  discover  a  scrap  of  paper  pinned  to  the 
infantas  clothing  asking  that  it  be  christened  Sarah. 

From  the  first,  and  until  recent  years,  a  little 
swinging  open-work  crib  of  wicker  stood  just  out- 
side of  the  door,  and  it  was  the  privilege  of  any 
mother  who  so  wished  to  leave  her  child  in  the  crib 
and  Iturry  off  unknown  in  the  darkness.  Always, 
night  and  day,  there  has  been  a  Sister  on  watch  at 
the  door  ready  to  take  at  once  any  child  left  there. 
It  was  some  years  ago  decided  that  the  swinging 
crib  should  be  set  just  inside  of  the  door,  instead  of 
outside,  and  now  a  mother  must  at  least  be  seen,  and 
may  then  if  she  chooses  go  off  into  the  darkness  and 
leave  her  child  forever. 

The  institution  receives  and  cares  for  an  average 
of  twenty-five  hundred  infants  annually,  and  in  the 
half  century  of  its  existence  has  received  a  total  of 
over  sixty-five  thousand. 


CHAPTER  XX 


THE  REGION  OF  EIVERSIDE 

T  is  one  of  life's  little  ironies  that 
the  most  romantically  distinctive 
and  distinctively  romantic  of  Bos- 
ton movements  should  have  resulted 
in  giving  to  New  York  three  of  its 
most  notable  citizens.  For  the 
movement  was  that  bravely  breezy 
movement  of  Brook  Farm,  which 
•  )^^'  in  the  promised  and  picturesque 
practicality  of  its  prospects  drew  the  attention  of  all 
America  and  stood  for  the  best  of  Boston.  George 
William  Curtis  was  a  Brook  Farmer,  he  of  whom  it 
has  been  so  well  said  that  he  was  superbly  artificial 
yet  that  his  artificiality  was  natural ;  and  his  literary 
fame  is  that  of  his  beloved  city  of  New  York. 
Charles  A.  Dana  was  a  Brook  Farmer,  and  his  fame 
is  linked  with  the  rise  and  power  of  the  paper  into 
which  he  flung  his  superb  vitality.  Isaac  Thomas 
Hecker  was  a  Brook  Farmer :  and  afterwards  he  be- 
came a  Catholic  and  entered  the  priesthood,  and,  the 
fire  of  originality  still  glowing  in  his  heart,  as  in  the 
hearts  of  the  few  others  of  the  remarkable  group,  he 
planned  the  foundation  of  an  order  of  priests  whose 

258 


THE  EEGION  OF  EIVEESIDE 


native  tongue  should  be  English.  He  founded  the 
order  of  St.  Paul  the  Apostle,  commonly  known  as 
the  Paulist  Fathers,  and  the  church  of  the  order  is  a 
structure  of  stone,  on  Columbus  Avenue  a  little  north 
of  59th  Street,  a  building  of  solemn  and  impressive 
interior,  with  groined  ceiling  showing  all  the  stars  in 
the  heavens  in  the  very  position  in  which  they  stood 
at  the  time  of  the  dedication  of  the  church. 

In  New  England,  Brook  Farm  made  '^The  Blithe- 
dale  Romance. ' '  In  New  York  it  made  the  New  York 
*^Sun,'^  and  *^Prue  and  I,"  and  the  Paulist  Fathers. 

A  little  to  the  north  and  west  of  this  huge  church, 
near  the  North  River,  is  an  unsavory  tenement  re- 
gion, of  mingled  whites  and  blacks,  known  in  frequent 
reports  of  police  activities,  as  San  Juan  Hill;  and 
there  is  a  great  tangle  of  railroad  switching  tracks — 
and  all  at  once,  at  72d  Street,  begins  the  superbly 
beautiful  Riverside  Drive. 

But  there  is  a  delightful  way  of  reaching  the  Drive, 
by  following  72d  Street,  which,  between  Central  Park 
and  Riverside,  is  maintained  by  the  city  as  practically 
itself  a  parkway. 

Riverside  Drive  runs  for  miles  along  the  Hudson, 
bordered  on  one  side  by  homes  and  even  more  by 
great  apartment  houses,  and  on  the  other  side  by  a 
beautiful  park  and  the  river. 

Riverside  Drive  is  not  straight;  it  is  far  from 
straight,  and  thereby  is  its  beauty  greatly  enhanced. 
It  curves  and  bends  unceasingly,  it  dips  in  long  and 
sweeping  grades  and  climbs  with  easy  swings.  And 
always  it  is  well  above  the  Hudson,  always  it  offers 

259 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


views  of  sweet  superbness.  And  here  and  there  is 
an  admirably  placed  monument,  such  as  the  Soldiers' 
and  Sailors '  or  that  to  General  Sigel. 

Not  only  is  the  Drive  bordered  by  buildings  with 
indications  of  plethora  of  wealth  and  comfort,  but 
the  streets  leading  from  it  give  likewise  an  aspect  of 
admirable  living.  Noticeable  almost  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Drive  is  the  house  of  Charles  A.  Schwab, 
a  costly  and  beautiful  structure,  and  Chenonceaux- 
like  in  effect,  even  though  so  far  above  the  water 
instead  of,  like  its  Touraine  prototype,  standing  upon 
and  over  a  stream. 

The  view  is  fine  and  fair  and  far  expanding. 
There  is  the  splendid  sweep  of  water;  there  are  the 
dark  green  heights,  across  the  river;  in  the  distance 
is  the  splendid  Indian  Head.  It  is  a  view  with  a 
sense  of  somberness,  a  view  of  sober  beauty,  a  view 
suggesting  strength  and  might,  a  wonderful  view  for 
a  city. 

Under  a  brilliant  sun  the  same  view  flashes  at  you 
like  a  view  unsheathed.  Yachts  and  motor-boats  dot 
the  water.  Great  warships  sway  gently  at  anchor. 
Go  up  the  river,  for  miles,  and  it  is  more  and  more 
to  be  seen  how  unceasingly  the  city  is  using,  for  joy 
and  pleasure,  this  superb  river  beside  which  it  is  set. 

Evening  comes  on,  and  the  heights  across  the 
stream  are  of  a  purple  beauty,  and  the  water  glim- 
mers mistily,  and  into  the  view  there  comes  a  subtle 
weirdness.  And  there  are  splendid  sunsets  across 
the  water,  splendid  sunsets  trailing  clouds  of  glory. 

Riverside  Drive  is  the  most  beautiful  city  drive  of 

260 


THE  REGION  OF  RIVERSIDE 


any  city  in  the  world,  the  drive  that  is  the  most  filled 
with  varied  charm  and  fine  beauty,  a  drive  that  is 
beautiful  by  night  and  day;  and  a  fine  way  to  enjoy 
it  is  to  ride  on  the  top  of  one  of  the  great  motor 
buses  that  run  over  here  from  Fifth  Avenue  and  go 
out  beyond  Grant 's  Tomb. 

Late  one  afternoon,  opposite  80th  Street,  an  elderly 
agitated  woman  hurried  up  to  a  policeman,  and  she 
pointed  up  into  a  tree,  and  her  voice  quaveringly 
rose  as  she  declared  that  her  eyeglasses  were  up 
there!  This  was  an  emergency  not  provided  for  in 
his  instructions.  But  he  began  to  talk  soothingly  to 
her.  *^But  I  mean  it!''  she  cried.  *^My  eyeglasses 
are  really  there!'' — Whereupon  he  looked  where  she 
pointed  and  there  her  glasses  dangled.  ^*I  was  on 
the  front  seat  of  that  stage  and  a  branch  caught 
them!"— 

Opposite  122nd  Street,  in  a  great  open  space,  in 
the  center  of  the  parkway,  rises  Grant's  Tomb,  a 
structure  of  massiveness,  of  balanced  lines,  of  grave 
proud  dignity. 

It  was  Grant's  own  desire  that  his  body  should  rest 
somewhere  in  New  York  City,  and  the  committee  that 
assumed  charge  thought  at  first  of  Central  Park.  But 
some  obstacles  developed,  whereupon  it  was  decided 
to  set  it  upon  a  certain  street-corner  space — but  this 
idea  was  hastily  abandoned  when  it  was  noticed  that 
if  put  there  it  would  face  a  cancer  hospital :  for  it  was 
remembered  that  Grant  died  of  cancer.  Then  River- 
side was  chosen,  and  this  spot  fixed  upon:  and  there 
could  not  be  a  nobler  and  more  fitting  site,  with  the 

261 


THE  BOOK  OP  NEW  YOEK 


park  itself,  with  its  greenery  and  paths  and  throngs, 
the  noble  breadth  of  river,  the  warships  that  often 
lie  here  at  anchor,  the  splendid  up-stream  stretch  of 
beauty  to  the  empurpled  hills  of  the  distances ;  and, 
close  by  the  great  monument,  the  little  grave,  which 
by  a  century  antedates  it,  of  the    amiable  child 

Grant's  Tomb  is  a  massive  structure,  Grecian  in  de- 
sign, measuring  ninety  feet  on  each  side,  and  rising, 
above  the  Doric  faces  of  the  square  lower  portion,  in 
circular  constructions  which  decrease  to  a  conical  top 
one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  above  the  ground. 

The  interior  aims  frankly  at  an  effect  of  splendid 
dignity  similar  to  that  gained  by  the  interior  of  the 
tomb  of  Napoleon.  The  sarcophagus  is  hewn  from  a 
single  block  of  red  porphyry,  and  it  rests  in  a  crypt 
down  into  which  the  visitors  look  from  an  encircling 
gallery.  And,  high  above  the  sarcophagus,  rises  a 
stately  dome. 

Near  the  spot  where  stands  this  tomb  much  of  the 
Battle  of  Harlem  Heights  was  fought,  and  it  went  to 
its  bitterly  contested  finish  in  the  nearby  locality,  just 
off  Eiverside  Drive,  where  now  stand  the  buildings  of 
Columbia  University.  Measured  by  numbers  of  men 
engaged  it  was  not  much  of  a  battle.  But  it  was  a 
victory  at  a  time  when  victory  was  sorely  needed,  and 
it  is  therefore  finely  memorable,  even  though  no  mil- 
lions of  men  were  engaged  and  although  the  total 
American  loss  was  but  a  hundred  and  fifty  men,  with 
that  of  the  British  a  little  more. 

Columbia  University  began  its  history  in  1754,  far 
down  in  lower  Manhattan,  as  King's  College,  and  its 

262 


THE  KEGION  OF  RIVERSIDE 


most  famous  student  was  Alexander  Hamilton.  The 
Revolution  gave  it  its  still  continuing  patriotic  name, 
and  the  first  to  graduate,  under  the  new  name  of 
Columbia,  was  De  Witt  Clinton. 

The  university  buildings  are  of  competent,  capable 
aspect,  and  the  library  building,  with  its  great  dome, 
is  a  very  beautiful  structure,  built  with  terraces  and 
approaches  and  with  an  air  of  having  plenty  of  room, 
something  which  is  not  characteristic  of  many  New 
York  buildings.  It  is  indeed  a  most  notable  building, 
splendidly  imposing. 

The  university  graduates  over  two  thousand  stu- 
dents each  year;  and  it  is  curious  that  so  great  an 
institution  should  seem  to  have  so  little  to  do  with  the 
life  of  the  city.  New  York  is  so  big  and  so  preoccu- 
pied with  its  own  progress,  that  it  absorbs,  in  incon- 
sequential fashion,  even  such  an  enormous  institution 
as  this.  The  city  does  not  neglect  it,  does  not  ignore 
or  belittle  it,  but  simply  does  not,  as  a  city,  pay  much 
attention  to  it.  The  name  of  the  president  is  recog- 
nized as  familiar  whenever  mentioned,  and  the  fact 
that  the  university  exists,  with  a  huge  attendance,  is 
known,  but  beyond  that  the  attitude  of  New  York  is 
one  of  readiness  to  notice  important  work  if  any  one 
connected  with  the  university  shall  perform  it. 

This  attitude  toward  Columbia  represents  the  city's 
attitude  toward  the  several  other  big  institutions  of 
learning  which  are  located  here :  A  ' '  Harvard  man ' ' 
means  a  good  deal  in  Boston ;  a  '^U.  of  P.  man''  means 
a  good  deal  in  Philadelphia ;  but  New  York  refuses  to 
consider  university  or  college  men  as,  in  themselves, 

263 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


important  entities.  Even  the  Hall  of  Fame,  kept  up 
solemnly  under  the  auspices  of  the  University  of  the 
City  of  New  York,  is  little  regarded  here  except  as  an 
admirably  designed  building,  for  it  does  not  repre- 
sent fame  that  has  been  accorded  by  New  York. 

On  Riverside  Drive,  a  little  north  of  Grant's  Tomb, 
is  the  Claremont,  a  building  a  century  and  a  quarter 
old,  but  altogether  altered  from  its  original  aspect  by 
galleries  and  porches.  It  was  occupied  ui  1807  by 
Viscount  Courtenay,  afterwards  Earl  of  Devon,  who 
from  this  Claremont  (named  from  the  estate  of 
Prince  William,  Duke  of  Clarence,  years  afterward 
to  be  King  William  the  Fourth),  watched  the  first 
passage  up  the  Hudson  of  Fulton's  steamboat,  the 
Clermont.  One  notices  how  the  English  titles  roll 
up!  A  few  years  later  Joseph  Bonaparte  occupied 
this  building.  Now  it  is  a  restaurant,  owned  by  the 
city. 

The  beautiful  Drive  extends  for  several  miles  be- 
yond Grant's  Tomb,  to  the  very  end  of  Manhattan,  at 
Spuyten  Duyvil;  and  nothing  in  the  growth  of  New 
York  is  more  striking  than  the  recent  development, 
made  possible  by  the  subway,  of  that  high-set  river- 
side region. 

Not  far  inland  from  the  Drive,  at  156th  Street  and 
Broadway,  is  a  building  which  suggests  what  fasci- 
nating variety  of  interest  a  great  city  may  offer;  for 
here  is  the  Hispanic  Museum,  a  long,  low,  beautiful 
building,  filled  with  examples  of  Spanish  art:  here 
are  the  glories  of  old  Spain :  here  are  Spanish  paint- 
ings by  Vel-iSquez  and  Murillo  and  Goya:  here  are 

264 


THE  EEGION  OF  EIVERSIDE 


lusters  of  iridescent  loveliness,  here  are  wrongM- 
iron  work  and  incomparable  carvings  in  Spanish 
leather — it  is  the  best  that  the  arts  and  artists  and 
artisans  of  old  Spain  can  show. 

Eeturning  to  the  Drive,  it  becomes  a  road  at  the 
foot  of  heights;  opposite  175th  Street  it  passes 
little  Fort  Washington  Park;  a  little  above  this,  by 
leaving  the  Drive  and  climbing  the  hill,  Fort  Wash- 
ington itself  may  be  reached,  about  opposite  187th 
Street.  This  is  the  highest  point  of  Manhattan  Is- 
land, the  land  being  two  hundred  and  seventy  feet 
above  tidewater. 

Parts  of  the  earthworks  of  the  fort  are  stiU  to  be 
seen,  for  private  ownership  of  an  estate  has  pre- 
served them,  and  it  has  recently  been  announced  that 
one  of  the  wealthiest  of  New  Yorkers  has  purchased 
a  great  tract,  including  Fort  Washington,  with  the 
intent  of  turning  all  of  it  over  to  the  city  to  be  a  pub- 
lic park  forever. 

It  is  strange  to  find,  within  the  limits  of  Manhattan 
Island,  the  earthwork  walls  of  Fort  Washington  still 
in  existence,  amid  oaks  and  maples  and  black  locusts 
and  horse-chestnuts  and  umbrella-magnolias  that 
have  freely  grown  up  here.  Grass  grows  deep  and 
lush,  and  it  is  a  spot  of  wild  beauty,  with  constantly 
the  splendid  presence  of  the  Hudson  down  at  the  foot 
of  the  steep  height.  It  will  still  be  beautiful,  if  it  be- 
comes a  park,  but  presumably  the  wildness  will  dis- 
appear. 

On  a  November  day  of  1776  this  fort  was  attacked 
by  the  British  in  numbers  much  greater  than  those  of 

265 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


the  garrison,  although  the  garrison  was  more  than 
three  thousand  men.  General  Greene  was  in  com- 
mand and  had  delegated  the  charge  of  the  fort  to 
Colonel  Magaw.  Washington  had  strongly  advised 
Greene  to  evacuate  the  fort,  but  had  left  the  matter  to 
his  discretion,  Greene  being  a  highly  trusted  officer. 
The  British,  attacking,  advanced  with  intrepidity,  and 
a  desperate  defense  could  not  check  them.  They 
stormed  onward,  killing  many  and  capturing  those 
who  remained,  and  thus  won  control  of  the  river. 

Washington,  deeply  concerned,  had  hurried  back 
from  a  journey  of  inspection  up  into  the  Highlands, 
to  look  over  the  situation  in  person,  learning  that  the 
fort  was  in  peril;  he  reached  Fort  Lee,  on  the  New 
Jersey  side  of  the  river,  across  from  Fort  Washing- 
ton, and  from  that  point  saw  that  the  attack  was 
actually  in  progress.  He  saw  the  lines  of  British 
sweeping  up  to  and  over  the  redoubts — these  very 
redoubts  that  are  still  here !  He  saw,  through  a  tele- 
scope, many  of  his  men  bayoneted  after  throwing 
down  their  arms  and  surrendering.  He  rushed  to  a 
boat,  leaped  in,  and  ordered  the  rowers  to  row  des- 
perately. The  river  is  here  of  great  width,  and  be- 
fore he  got  to  Fort  Washington  he  met  a  boat  con- 
taining General  Greene,  who  had  himself  hastened 
across  the  river  to  the  aid  of  his  subordinate,  Magaw, 
but  had  turned  back  when  he  saw  that  actually  to  land 
would  be  but  futile. 

Washington's  grief  and  anger  were  for  a  few  min- 
utes unrestrained.  It  was  one  of  the  few  times  in  his 
life  that  he  permitted  his  passionately  strong  feelings 

266 


THE  EEGION  OF  RIVERSIDE 


to  show.  He  wept  with  rage ;  he  furiously  swore ;  it 
was  one  of  those  swearing  fits  when  those  near  by,  if 
they  were  wise,  made  way ;  he  blindly  wanted  to  go  on, 
as  at  Murray  Hill,  and  force  back  the  British  single- 
handed;  but  soon  he  controlled  himself  and  ordered 
his  men  to  row  back  to  the  farther  side.  And  what  he 
said  to  Greene,  who  was  not  in  a  position  to  make  way, 
but  had  to  listen,  must  have  made  that  officer  regret 
a  number  of  things  and  spend  an  extraordinarily  un- 
happy quarter  of  an  hour. 

You  may  still  see  about  where  the  two  boats  must 
have  met — just  down  there,  somewhat  on  the  New 
York  side  of  the  river. 


267 


CHAPTER  XXI 


TO  JUMEL  AND  VAN  COETLANDT 


OTHING  better  illustrates 
the  changes  that  have  grad- 
ually come  over  New  York 
City  than  the  changes  in  the 
location  of  the  churches. 
That  St.  Patrick's  Cathe- 
dral should  go  from  Prince 
Street  to  50th  is  one  of  the 
illustrative  touches,  but 
there  are  many  other 
churches  which  have  moved 
a  number  of  times  with  the 
changing  of  the  character  of  the  surrounding  popula- 
tion. 

An  excellent  example  is  a  German  Reformed 
Church  which  long  ago,  in  1758,  stood  far  down  on 
Nassau  Street.  After  many  years  it  moved  to  For- 
syth Street,  and  after  a  while,  following  another  shift 
in  population,  to  Norfolk.  And  in  1897  it  moved  to 
68th  Street,  far  over  toward  the  East  River,  in  what 
had  become  a  German  settlement. 

The  church  is  very  clean,  it  is  shiningly  varnished, 
and  its  tower  holds  a  bell  which  was  sent  over  as  a 

268 


TO  JUMEL  AND  VAN  CORTI.ANDT 


gift  because  of  the  interesting  connection  of  this  Ger- 
man Reformed  Church  with  a  great  man  of  the  Revo- 
lution. 

In  the  vestibule  is  set  a  mural  cenotaph,  which  was 
first  set  within  the  old  church  on  Nassau  Street,  and 
which  has  accompanied  the  church  in  each  of  the  steps 
of  its  migration.  It  is  a  most  romantic  looking  thing 
in  a  most  unromantic  looking  building,  and  it  is  in 
honor  of  that  distinguished  soldier.  Baron  Steuben, 
who  did  so  much  to  aid  the  Americans,  and  who,  when 
the  Revolution  was  over,  lived  like  a  feudal  prince  on 
the  great  estate  which  was  granted  him  in  Central 
New  York,  coming  down  to  the  city  frequently  to  see 
and  be  entertained  by  his  friends,  who  were  in  turn 
generously  entertained  at  his  country-seat. 

The  mural  memorial,  with  its  oddly  pointed  top, 
sets  forth  in  long  recitation  his  virtues  and  achieve- 
ments, with  the  statement  that  ''the  highly  polished 
manners  of  the  Baron  were  graced  by  the  most  noble 
feelings  of  the  heart.*'  It  states  also  that  he  was  a 
Knight  of  the  Order  of  Fidelity;  and  it  may  be  men- 
tioned that  the  cross,  surrounded  by  diamonds,  which 
he  loved  to  wear  on  his  breast  and  which  is  so  famil- 
iarly known  from  his  portraits,  was  the  cross  of  this 
order,  and  that  it  was  given  him  by  the  Prince  Mar- 
grave of  Baden. 

The  one  who  placed  the  memorial  to  Steuben  in  the 
original  church  was  willing  to  remain  himself  un- 
known; and  merely  closed  his  lengthy  eulogy  with 
the  statement  that  the  memorial  was  set  there  by  one 
**who  had  the  honor  to  be  his  aide-de-camp,  the  happi- 

269 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


ness  to  be  his  friend.''  And  in  the  course  of  time 
and  of  migrations  the  church  itself  has  quite  forgot- 
ten the  name  of  the  original  donor,  who  was  Colonel 
William  North,  an  officer  of  notable  bravery. 

Baron  Steuben  was  among  the  most  delightfully 
interesting  of  men.  Everybody  loved  him.  One  of 
the  few  recorded  conversations  in  which  Mrs.  Wash- 
ington figures,  was  a  conversation  with  Steuben  in 
regard  to  a  fishing  experience  in  the  Hudson  River. 
*^And  what  did  you  catch whale,  my  lady,'' 
was  the  reply.  **A  whale!"  was  the  astonished  ex- 
clamation. ^*A  whale!  You  caught  a  whale  in  the 
Hudson  River  at  New  York!"  ^^Yes,  my  lady." 
But  soon  it  was  discovered  that  the  delightful  Baron 
had  been  misled  by  his  limited  knowledge  of  English 
and  that  he  had  no  intention  of  rivaling  that  other 
baron,  Munchausen,  and  that  what  he  had  caught  was 
in  reality  but  an  eel. 

When  Steuben  died,  at  his  lonely  log  house  built 
within  his  sixteen  thousand  acres,  he  was  buried  in  a 
lonely  grave  in  the  forest,  with  but  a  handful  of 
mourners  accompanying  his  body.  And  it  is  pleasant 
to  think  that  he  is  kept  in  mind,  in  New  York  City, 
by  this  curiously  peripatetic  memorial. 

Where  this  church  stands  is  in  oncewhile  York- 
ville,  well  on  the  way  toward  Harlem.  The  nucleus 
of  the  district  known  as  Harlem,  which  in  popular 
fancy  stands  as  peculiarly  representative  of  the  apart- 
ment dwellers  of  New  York,  and  which  is  generally 
taken  to  mean  that  part  of  Manhattan  Island  north  of 
Central  Park  and  as  far  as  155th  Street  (the  region 

270 


TO  JUMEL  AND  VAN  CORTLANDT 


beyond  that,  where  the  island  narrows  between  the 
Harlem  River  and  the  Hudson,  being  known  as  Har- 
lem Heights  and  Washington  Heights),  was  a  little 
settlement  which  was  given  this  name  by  Governor 
Stuyvesant,  who,  when  a  committee  came  before  him, 
each  man  urging,  amid  clouds  of  tobacco  smoke,  that 
the  settlement  be  named  after  his  o^vn  native  Dutch 
town,  took  the  matter  under  sage  advisement  and,  re- 
flecting finally  that  none  of  the  urgent  committeemen 
was  from  Haarlem,  deemed  it  wise  to  use  that  name, 
to  avoid  jealousies ;  and  Haarlem,  but  without  one  of 
the  **a's,''  it  has  since  remained,  in  its  expanded  area. 

A  little  northwest  of  the  northwest  corner  of  Cen- 
tral Park,  on  a  lowish  cliff  above  Morningside  Park, 
is  the  new  Episcopalian  Cathedral,  now  under  con- 
struction, the  Cathedral  of  St.  John  the  Divine.  The 
cornerstone  was  laid  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago;  its 
final  stone  will  not  be  laid  for  perhaps  half  a  century 
still  to  come.  Its  tallest  tower  will  rise  to  the  height 
of  455  feet.  The  total  cost  of  the  structure — ^this  must 
be  mentioned,  or  it  would  not  seem  like  New  York — 
is  to  be  more  than  six  million  dollars. 

Massive,  huge  in  bulk,  rising  with  much  of  mediaeval 
promise,  it  already  gives  indications  of  impressive- 
ness.  In  magnitude  of  conception  it  rivals  the  great 
cathedrals  of  the  old  world.  As  planned,  it  is  to  be 
of  the  immense  length  of  520  feet ;  six  feet  longer  than 
the  Cathedral  of  Canterbury!  The  continued  con- 
struction of  this  mighty  structure  will  be  watched  with 
interest  not  only  by  New  York  but  by  all  America. 

Twenty-five  blocks  due  north  from  this,  at  West 

271 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


138th  Street,  at  the  edge  of  a  rocky  cliff,  is  the  Col- 
lege of  the  City  of  New  York,  a  widespreading  mass 
of  buildings,  high-placed  but  not  themselves  high,  im- 
pressive in  their  Tudor  style,  really  beautiful  in 
strong-contrasting  dark  and  white,  with  a  main  tower, 
impressive  and  dignified,  standing  in  domination  of 
far-flung  pinnacles  and  crockets  and  gables. 

The  buildings  are  of  native  rock,  and  there  is  free 
use  along  the  corners  and  around  the  windows  and 
doorways  of  what  looks  like  white  stone  but  which  is 
really  glazed  terra-cotta.  In  all,  the  buildings  give  an 
Oxford-like  impression,  and  have  beauty  and  distinc- 
tion, with  their  mullioned  windows,  their  gargoyles, 
their  towers,  their  pointed  gables  of  stone,  their  fine 
doorways,  their  admirable  design  throughout.  All 
they  need  now,  to  make  them  still  more  like  Oxford, 
is  a  few  centuries  of  existence  and  a  long  list  of 
famous  names  associated  with  them. 

At  160th  Street,  on  a  height  above  the  Harlem 
Eiver,  stands  a  beautiful  mansion,  which  has  stood 
on  this  commanding  height  for  more  than  a  century 
and  a  half.  Its  outlook  is  widespread.  As  an  ad- 
vertisement for  its  sale,  as  far  distant  as  1792,  ex- 
pressed it :  *  *  The  house  commands  an  extended  view 
of  the  Hudson,  of  the  East  Eiver,  the  Harlem  Eiver, 
Hell  Gate,  and  the  Sound.  In  front  is  seen  the  city 
of  New  York,  and  the  high  hills  on  Staten  Island,  dis- 
tant more  than  twenty  miles.  To  the  left  are  seen 
Long  Island,  Westchester,  Morrisania,  and  the  village 
of  Harlem  with  its  cultivated  surrounding  fields." 

The  house  was  built  by  a  British  officer,  Colonel 

272 


TO  JUMEL  AND  VAN  COKTLANDT 


Roger  Morris,  as  a  home  for  himself  and  his  bride, 
that  Mary  Philipse  whom  Washington,  as  a  young 
man,  had  warmly  wooed :  and  in  refusing  George,  who 
was  to  inherit  a  beautiful  home  in  a  superb  situation, 
and  in  accepting  Roger,  Mary  Philipse  at  least  chose 
a  man  who  could  put  up  a  beautiful  home  in  a  superb 
situation.  It  was  a  home  of  wealth.  Pillar-fronted, 
balconied,  fan-windowed,  the  house  stands  on  its  lofty 
height  in  sweet  serenity. 

When  the  Revolution  came,  Morris  and  his  wife  fled 
to  England,  and  this  property  was  confiscated.  For  a 
month  and  a  half  it  was  Washington's  headquarters 
previous  to  the  loss  of  Fort  Washington;  and  a  tradi- 
tion— difficult  to  adjust,  as  to  time,  with  the  Fort 
Washington  and  Harlem  Heights  fighting — has  it  that 
a  young  woman,  a  very  pretty  vivandiere,  approached 
him,  at  this  house,  and,  reverently  touching  him  on 
the  arm  ^reverently"  is  the  word  that  has  come 
down  with  the  story),  whispered  to  him  what  must 
have  been  a  warning,  for  he  and  his  staff  were  off  like 
the  wind,  and  in  a  few  minutes  a  British  regiment 
(tradition  retains  even  the  name  of  the  regiment, 
which  was  the  42nd  Highlanders,  the  famous  Black 
Watch!)  came  creeping  up  the  rocks,  intent  on  a  sur- 
prise and  capture. 

The  charming  house,  so  charmingly  set,  has  always 
maintained  an  atmosphere  of  fine  living,  except  for 
some  years  following  the  war  and  the  confiscation. 
It  was  during  this  period  of  neglect,  when  a  farmer 
was  in  charge  as  caretaker,  that  Washington  one 
day  planned  a  delightful  picnic.    He  and  Mrs. 

273 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


Washington  drove  out  to  Fort  Washington : — it  seems 
odd  that  he  should  have  chosen  a  place  of  such  tragic 
and  unhappy  memories  for  a  picnic,  but,  presumably, 
it  was  on  account  of  the  mighty  changes  that  had  come 
that  he  chose  the  spot :  for  the  United  States  had  been 
established  and  recognized  and  he  was  its  President 
on  this  day  in  July  of  1790.  The  picnic  party  that 
gathered  at  the  fort  included  John  Adams,  the  Vice- 
President,  and  his  wife,  and  General  Knox,  the  Secre- 
tary of  War,  and  his  wife,  and  Alexander  Hamilton, 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  and  his  wife,  and  Thomas 
Jefferson,  Secretary  of  State,  then  a  widower,  his 
wife,  who  had  worked  and  planned  with  him  in  the 
building  of  wonderful  Monticello,  having  died. 

The  picture  of  these  great  and  charming  folk  pic- 
nicking out  here,  on  the  highest  point  of  Manhattan, 
and  wandering  about  the  redoubts,  and  talking  of  what 
had  already  become  ^^old  times,''  is  one  to  fascinate 
the  fancy.  And  after  a  while,  all  left  Fort  Washing- 
ton, and  drove  over  here  to  what  we  now  call  the  Jumel 
Mansion,  and  there  a  formal  dinner  was  served,  with 
Washington  as  host,  he  having  ordered  it  sent  out 
from  the  city.  One  may  presume  that  the  thought 
must  frequently  have  come  to  him,  that  he  was  in  the 
house  which  had  been  the  home  of  one  whom  he  would 
gladly  have  made  his  wife ;  and  it  may  equally  be  pre- 
sumed that  this  was  a  fact  which  had  never  entered 
into  his  confidences  with  the  agreeable  Widow  Custis, 
and  did  not  now  enter  into  his  spoken  recollection  in 
the  presence  of  the  stately  and  still  agreeable  Mrs. 
Washington. 

274 


TO  JUMEL  AND  VAN  COKTLANDT 


But  the  associations  most  strongly  connected  with 
the  house  are  those  connected  with  the  remarkable 
Jumels.  For  Stephen  Jumel  and  his  wife  were  indeed 
remarkable  people.  They  had  personality.  They  im- 
pressed themselves. 

Jumel  was  a  French  merchant  doing  business  in 
New  York.  He  bought  this  house  in  1810.  He  had 
married  an  American  woman  of  whose  antecedents 
and  personal  history  little  was  generally  known,  but 
there  seems  to  have  been  no  real  ground  for  malicious 
stories  which  rival  hostesses  loved  to  whisper.  Jumel 
and  his  wife  became  prominent  as  entertainers  of  the 
most  distinguished  foreign  visitors  to  New  York,  and 
it  was  this  remarkable  success  which  made  some  rivals 
gossipingly  ungenerous. 

The  Jumels  were  rich.  They  were  clever.  They 
were  likable.  They  were  people  of  fine  taste,  and  had 
lovingly  repaired  the  fine  old  building,  and  restored 
it,  just  as  it  deserved  to  be  repaired  and  restored. 
They  could  make  themselves  desired  by  great  and 
brilliant  folk,  and  they  were  themselves  brilliant 
folk. 

Joseph  Bonaparte,  King  of  Spain  and  of  Naples, 
was  entertained  at  this  house  by  the  Jumels.  So  was 
the  King  of  Westphalia,  Jerome  Bonaparte.  So  was 
the  Prince  de  Joinville.  Lafayette  was  a  guest  here 
in  1825.  And  these  were  but  a  few  of  the  great  ones. 
Louis  Napoleon  was  Madame  JumePs  guest  here, 
in  1837,  Stephen  Jumel  having  died,  and  Napoleon 
went  to  France,  assisted  by  her  money,  to  make  one 
of  hiiS  earlier  attempts  for  ruler  ship  there.  General 

275 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


Sherman,  in  Civil  War  days,  was  among  the  latest  of 
celebrities  to  be  a  Jumel  guest. 

Jumel  himself  died  in  1832.  He  and  his  wife  had 
shone  socially  in  the  best  circles  in  Paris  as  well  as  in 
New  York,  and  especially  under  the  Napoleonic 
regime.  It  was  always  understood  and  believed,  al- 
though the  matter  cannot  now  be  settled  by  what  is 
termed  positive  proof,  that  either  after  the  disasters 
preceding  Elba,  or  those  preceding  St.  Helena,  Jumel 
had  a  ship,  manned  and  equipped,  ready  to  take  Bona- 
parte to  America,  where,  it  is  know,  he  very  much 
wished  to  come,  at  least  after  Waterloo. 

In  1814  the  Khedive  of  Egypt  sent  as  a  gift  to 
Napoleon  several  hundred  African  cypress  trees, 
young  little  trees,  each  with  its  roots  wrapped  up  in  a 
little  bag  filled  with  native  earth.  Napoleon's  en- 
forced trip  to  Elba  kept  him  from  doing  a  great  many 
things,  including  the  planting  of  these  trees,  and  the 
Jumels,  finding  them  thrown  aside,  neglected,  in  the 
garden  of  the  Tuileries,  saw  the  opportunity  to  do  a 
pretty  thing.  They  could  not  take  Napoleon  to 
America;  but  they  could  take  those  trees,  and  save 
them  from  dying;  and  they  did!  And  they  planted 
them  in  their  grounds,  around  a  fish  pond  which  was 
part  of  the  estate  of  their  mansion,  at  what  is  now  the 
corner  of  St.  Nicholas  Avenue  and  159th  Street ;  and 
many  of  them  lived  there,  for  almost  a  full  century. 
I  remember  seeing  some  twenty  of  them  still  standing 
as  recently  as  about  1910. 

The  Jumel  Mansion  has  been  bought  by  the  city  to 
be  preserved  as  a  public  possession  and  museum,  and 

276 


TO  JUMEL  AND  VAN  CORTLANDT 


contains  much  old-time  furniture.  The  house  is 
roofed  with  shingles  of  great  size;  it  has  charming 
doorways ;  it  has  a  broad  hall  and  admirable  rooms ; 
catalpa  and  box  bushes  grow  round  about,  the  box 
having  been  procured  from  the  box  garden  of  Mt. 
Vernon. 

The  history  and  associations  of  this  house,  and  the 
personality  of  the  Jumels,  make  altogether  a  bizarre 
and  colorful  picture  in  the  history  of  New  York.  And 
most  bizarre  of  all  the  associations  was  the  second 
marriage  of  Madame  Jumel.  For  here,  the  year  after 
Jumel 's  death,  she  was  married  to  Aaron  Burr.  She 
had  engaged  Burr  to  attend  to  some  law  business,  and 
he  made  court  to  her  with  the  ardor  of  youth,  almost 
eighty  years  old  though  he  was,  and  she  a  woman  of 
approaching  sixty. 

She  refused  his  suit,  but,  not  willing  to  take  such  a 
rebuff.  Burr  one  day  appeared  at  the  house  and  told 
her  that  he  was  there  to  marry  her.  He  had  with  him 
the  very  minister  who  had  officiated  at  his  first  mar- 
riage, fifty-one  years  before!  The  very  boldness  of 
it  succeeded,  and  she  permitted  the  marriage  to  pro- 
ceed. But  the  married  life  of  the  curious  couple  was 
short,  and  was  ended  by  a  separation  and  then  a 
divorce,  and  Mrs.  Burr  continued  to  be  known  as 
Madame  Jumel.  And  as  Burr  shortly  thereafter  died, 
the  incident  was  thus  doubly  closed. 

Madame  Jumel  lived  till  about  the  age  of  ninety, 
not  dying  until  1865.  Her  life  spanned  American  his- 
tory from  Lexington  to  Appomattox. 

An  old  New  Yorker  tells  me  how^  she  used  to  look  in 

277 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


her  later  years.  She  was  still  the  grande  dame,  and 
he  remembers  seeing  her  driving,  daily,  in  a  high- 
swung  calash;  she  impressed  him — ^he  was  a  young 
man  then — as  overdressed  but  impressive ;  she  usually 
wore  canary-colored  satin,  and  rouged  her  cheeks. 
They  had  never  met,  yet,  passing  each  other  daily,  she 
seemed  to  recognize  in  him  a  young  friend,  and  he 
liked  to  receive  her  friendly,  stately  bow. 

Fitz-Greene  Halleck  used  to  visit  here,  and  it  has 
always  been  understood  that  it  was  while  he  was  a 
Jumel  guest,  in  this  house  associated  with  the  great- 
est men  of  our  Revolution,  where  he  could  hear 
talk  of  Napoleon  and  his  marshals  that  came  from 
personal  acquaintance  with  them,  that,  thus  inspired, 
he  wrote  his  right  brave  fighting  lines : 

* '  Strike — till  the  last  armed  foe  expires ; 
Strike — for  your  altars  and  your  fires ; 
Strike — for  the  green  graves  of  your  sires; 
God,  and  your  native  land ! ' ' 

Far  to  the  northward  of  the  Jumel  Mansion,  on  the 
farther  side  of  the  Harlem,  close  to  the  northern  edge 
of  Greater  New  York  and  the  line  of  Yonkers,  in  the 
midst  of  one  of  the  city's  greatest  parks.  Van  Cort- 
landt,  still  stands  a  delightful  pre-Eevolutionary 
home,  the  Van  Cortlandt  Mansion.  It  is  set  in  the 
midst  of  a  level  plain,  hemmed  in  by  low-rising  slopes. 
It  was  built  in  1748.  It  is  spacious,  dignified,  and  al- 
together sweet  and  charming  in  its  setting  in  the  midst 
of  sweeping  greenery. 

In  its  interior  it  is  of  fetching  interest  to  those  who 

278 


TO  JUMEL  AND  VAN  COETLANDT 


love  the  old,  with  its  fireplaces,  its  paneling,  its  wain- 
scoting. It  is  kept  up  as  a  public  museum  to  set  forth 
the  furniture  and  fittings  of  the  past,  and  particu- 
larly of  note  are  the  fascinating  chintzes,  old  wall 
hangings,  with  their  pictures  of  such  scenes  as  Penn  ^s 
Treaty;  and  also  of  particular  interest  is  the  great 
cellar-kitchen,  homelike  and  comfortable. 

But  little  of  definite  association  or  history  is  con- 
nected with  this  pleasing  memento  of  the  past.  A 
wounded  British  officer  died,  within  these  walls,  in  the 
arms  of  his  fiancee.  Washington  slept  one  night  here, 
in  1781.  He  slept  here  one  other  night,  in  1783,  and 
this  second  time  changed  a  traveling  suit  of  clothes 
for  a  suit  more  fitting  for  New  York.  Which  re- 
minds me  of  the  house  in  Keswick,  in  England,  where 
a  tablet  on  the  wall  declares  that  within  that  building 
the  Prince  of  Wales  once  changed  his  shirt. 


279 


CHAPTER  XXII 


HAMILTON  AND  BUKR 


PLEASANT  description  has  come 
down  to  us  of  pretty  Eliza- 
beth Schuyler  playing  back- 
gammon    with  Benjamin 
L        Franklin,  at  her  home,  the 


home  of  her  father,  the  great 
Schuyler,  in  Albany,  when  she 
was  but  a  charming  young 


girl.  '^He  was  very  kind  to  me,"  she  said  long  after- 
wards. The  picture  is  not  that  of  the  usual  Franklin, 
a  man  immersed  in  affairs,  but  of  a  kindly,  a  s^Tupa- 
thetic  Franklin,  a  very  human  Franklin.  Did  his  wise 
old  eyes,  which  had  seen  so  much,  discern  some  sug- 
gestion of  a  sad  future  in  the  soft  brightness  of  hers? 
It  was  not  like  busy  old  Benjamin  to  spend  his  time 
playing  backgammon  with  a  young  girl,  when  his 
country  needed  all  his  thought.  ^*He  was  very  kind 
to  me.''  One  likes  Franklin  so  much  the  better  for 
these  simple  words  of  a  girPs  appreciation! 

She  became  the  mfe  of  Alexander  Hamilton,  and  a 
future  of  happiness  seemed  assured.  But  her  eldest 
son  was  killed  in  a  duel  on  the  Weehawken  bluffs. 
Three  years  afterwards,  her  husband  was  killed  in  a 


280 


HAMILTON  AND  BURR 


duel  with  Burr  on  the  same  spot.  And  then  there  fol- 
lowed a  saddened  widowhood  of  fifty  long  years. 

The  Hamilton  and  Burr  duel  still  looms  vividly 
as  the  most  intimate  tragedy  of  New  York.  It  is  as 
if  it  took  place  but  yesterday.  The  quarrel,  and  the 
duel,  and  the  death  of  Hamilton,  are  still  matters  of 
concern. 

That  Weehawken  dueling  ground  was  a  fatal  place 
in  early  New  York  days.  It  was  a  level  spot  on  the 
face  of  the  rocky  cliff.  There  was  no  access  from 
above :  except  at  low  tide  it  could  not  be  approached 
even  from  below  except  by  small  boats.  And  finally 
it  was  blasted  quite  out  of  existence:  although  not 
until  it  had  blasted  a  good  many  lives. 

Dueling  was  recognized  by  most  men  of  Hamilton's 
day.  He  himself  had  once  acted  as  a  second.  And 
so,  when  he  carried  on  a  long  campaign  of  vilification 
against  Burr,  using  fighting  words,"  and  using  all 
of  his  great  influence  to  keep  Burr  from  the  Gov- 
ernorship of  New  York  and  from  the  Presidency  of 
the  nation,  it  was  not  strange  that  a  duel  ended  it  all. 

The  comparative  character  and  aims  of  Hamilton 
and  Burr  have  been  so  unquestioningly  established  by 
what  is  known  as  history  that  it  would  be  altogether 
unprofitable  to  attempt  a  revision.  One  was  abso- 
lutely good,  the  other  absolutely  bad,  for  history  has 
it  so. 

Almost  all  history  represents  the  judgments  and 
passions  of  the  time  of  which  it  treats.  The  more 
deeply  the  historian  delves,  the  more  passion  and  prej- 
udice he  unearths.    The  passion  and  prejudice  may 

281 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


represent  the  truth,  in  which  case  history  will  repre- 
sent the  truth ;  but  it  may  be  untruth,  or  it  may  be  a 
mixture.  The  feeling  of  their  day  was  intensely  for 
Hamilton  and  as  intensely  against  Burr,  and  there- 
fore we  find  the  feeling  perpetuated. 

Hamilton  must  have  possessed  great  and  admirable 
qualities.  He  had  done  great  things.  He  had  made 
powerful  friends,  and  had  even  won  the  warm  friend- 
ship of  Washington.  He  had  married  into  one  of  the 
great  families.  He  had  gained  popular  admiration. 
And  he  was  killed  by  his  rival,  which  added  the  final 
touch  of  glory  to  the  one  and  of  depravity  to  the 
other. 

The  two  men  and  their  rivalry  made  so  vivid  an 
impression,  not  only  in  New  York  but  in  the  whole 
country,  that  their  story  is  as  if  of  only  yesterday. 
They  were  within  less  than  a  year  of  each  other  in 
age.  They  were  within  an  inch  of  each  other  in 
height,  and  the  height  was  below  the  average.  They 
were  greatly  alike  in  ambition,  in  personal  magnetism, 
in  certainty  of  thought  and  swiftness  of  decision. 

For  a  time  after  the  Eevolution,  they  were  friends, 
and  dominated  the  New  York  bar.  One  or  the  other 
was  sure  of  the  important  cases.  Judges  feared  their 
dominant  way,  their  intellectual  superiority.  Then 
came  political  rivalry  and  jealousy.  Hamilton,  hon- 
ored and  admired  though  he  was,  was  not  much  con- 
sidered for  high  elective  office ;  his  triumphs  in  office 
were  in  appointive  service.  Burr,  on  the  other  hand, 
had  the  kind  of  following  that  rallies  at  the  polls, 
and  he  tied  Jefferson  for  the  Presidency,  and  became 

282 


HAMILTON  AND  BURE 


Vice-President  when  the  election  had  to  be  decided  by 
the  House  of  Eepresentatives. 

It  was  in  1804  that  the  fatal  clash  came.  The  home 
of  Hamilton  was  at  that  time  the  Grange,  as  it  was 
called,  a  building  still  standing,  moved  indeed  from  its 
original  location,  but  still  in  the  same  general  neigh- 
borhood, it  now  being  on  Convent  Avenue,  close 
against  a  modern  brown-stone  church. 

It  seems  curious  that  Hamilton,  a  lawyer  in  active 
practice,  should  have  made  his  home,  in  those  early 
days,  far  up  there  on  Washington  Heights,  miles 
northward  from  what  was  then  the  city,  although 
within  the  limits  of  Manhattan  Island.  But  it  was 
because  he  was  a  far-sighted  man  financially ;  because 
he  anticipated  vast  increase  in  land  values;  and, 
too,  because  he  personally  loved  to  live  in  the  coun- 
try. 

The  appearance  of  his  house  has  been  largely  al- 
tered, but  it  may  still  be  seen  what  it  originally  was : 
a  square-fronted  house,  with  a  huge  portico,  and 
with  a  projecting  central  octagon  room.  The  fine 
cornice  lines  show  the  original  dentils  and  triglyphs ; 
there  is  a  fine  old  doorway,  with  glass  in  designs  of 
easy-curving  circles  and  semi-circles;  and  the  roof 
and  the  portico  are  liberally  balustraded. 

It  was  from  this  house  that  Hamilton  went  forth 
to  his  death  in  his  duel  across  the  Hudson,  and  it 
was  from  this  house  that  Mrs.  Hamilton  and  the 
seven  children  were  hurriedly  driven  far  down  to 
82  Jane  Street,  in  Greenwich  Village,  when  the  news 
of  the  duel  came,  to  see  him  before  he  died.  The 

283 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


house  to  which  he  was  carried  was  that  of  a  friend, 
William  Bayard,  and  it  has  now  disappeared. 

Burr  at  that  time  lived  in  the  great  mansion  known 
as  Eichmond  Hill,  which  stood  a  little  north  of  St. 
John's  Park,  where  Charlton  Street  crosses  Varick 
or,  more  strictly,  on  a  knoll  in  the  center  of  an  estate 
within  the  block  now  bounded  by  King,  Varick,  Charl- 
ton and  Macdougal  Streets.  Though  long  ago  de- 
stroyed, Eichmond  Hill  is  still  remembered  as  a  name 
which,  more  than  any  other,  stands  in  the  popular 
imagination  as  representative  of  old  New  York. 

It  was  built  by  a  British  commissary  in  1760 ;  it  was 
afterwards  occupied,  in  turn,  by  Lord  Amherst  and 
Sir  William  Carleton;  in  1776  it  was  lived  in  for  a 
short  time  by  Washington;  it  w^as  the  home  of  John 
Adams  when  he  lived  in  New  York  as  Vice-President ; 
and  afterward  it  became  the  home  of  Aaron  Burr. 

On  what  is  now  Spring  Street,  just  west  of  Mac- 
dougal, was  the  gateway  through  which  Burr  quietly 
walked  on  his  way  to  the  duel,  and  through  which 
some  hours  later  he  returned,  outwardly  so  calm  and 
unconcerned  that  one  who  knew  him  well,  and  talked 
with  him  in  the  library  of  his  splendid  home,  merely 
noticed  that  he  was,  as  usual,  calm  and  perfectly  at 
ease ;  and  when  the  friend  left  and  went  out  into  the 
streets,  he  was  amazed  to  learn  that  Burr  had  that 
morning  fought  a  duel  and  that  the  city  was  aflame 
with  excitement  over  Hamilton's  impending  death. 

Down  in  Old  Trinity  churchyard  is  a  simple  monu- 
ment, rising  pyramidally  from  a  base  with  curved 
corners;  it  was  long  ago  erected  by  the  corporation 

284 


HAMILTON  AND  BUKR 


of  the  church  in  honor  of  Hamilton,  who  is  buried 
beneath  it.  The  very  unostentation  of  this  memento 
mori  would  give  no  indication  of  the  tremendous  im- 
pression which  his  death  in  reality  made.  The  entire 
city  mourned.  Guns  boomed  from  the  vessels  in  the 
harbor,  both  French  and  American,  while  his  funeral 
was  in  progress.  It  is  still  told  that  his  sword  and 
his  hat  lay  on  his  coffin,  and  that  in  front  of  this  was 
led,  by  two  black  servants,  his  favorite  gray  horse, 
with  spurred  boots  swinging  reversed ;  the  black  men 
being  dressed  in  white,  with  white  turbans  bound  in 
crape.  And  more  than  any  other  citizen  of  the  city, 
Alexander  Hamilton  still  fills  the  eye  of  New  York. 

Burr,  the  rival,  was  a  man  of  singular  personal 
charm.  There  was  probably,  one  may  presume, 
something  untrustworthy  in  him,  to  explain  how  he 
could  gain  the  deep  distrust  of  such  men  as  Washing- 
ton, Jefferson  and  Hamilton;  and  yet,  the  friends  of 
Burr  declared  that  the  other  two  men  were  mainly 
moved  in  their  judgment  by  Hamilton's  bitter  ani- 
mosity to  Burr  and  by  their  confidence  in  the  judg- 
ment of  Hamilton. 

In  private  life,  the  characteristic  for  which  Burr  is 
most  held  in  opprobrium,  his  relations  with  women, 
was  a  characteristic  of  Hamilton  also,  although  he 
has  escaped  the  odium ;  an  advantage  that  came  from 
his  being  a  popular  idol. 

Whatever  of  the  sinister  or  the  unscrupulous  there 
may  have  been  in  Burr's  methods  and  aims,  and 
there  seems  to  have  been  much,  he  was  a  man  of  pro- 
found mind,  of  deep  sagacity,  of  infinite  daring,  of 

285 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


sweeping  ambition.  When  he  saw  that  the  duel  had 
closed  forever  his  hopes  of  further  power  within  the 
United  States,  he  pictured  a  mighty  empire  to  rise  be- 
yond the  Appalachians,  with  himself  as  its  head.  His 
plan  would  have  taken  the  Mississippi  Valley  from 
the  United  States,  and  had  he  been  a  loyal  American 
he  could  not,  therefore,  have  considered  it;  but  the 
temptation  was  immense,  and  he  felt  embittered  be- 
cause the  United  States  had  so  turned  against 
him. 

One  of  the  most  romantic  episodes  in  American 
history  was  that  of  Burr's  projected  empire.  He 
was  stirred  by  the  example  of  Napoleon,  then  in  the 
sweep  of  power.  As  Napoleon  had  carved  for  him- 
self an  empire  in  Europe,  he  would  do  the  same  in 
America.  Burr  would  be  another  Napoleon.  And  he 
was  not  only  a  lawyer  and  statesman  but  had  been 
an  excellent  soldier. 

The  country  beyond  the  Appalachians  had  from 
the  first  exerted  a  charm  on  brave  and  romantic 
minds.  Sir  Walter  Scott  has  said  that  the  adherents 
of  the  Young  Pretender"  planned  a  kingdom  for 
him  on  the  other  side  of  these  mountains  after  the 
failure  of  1745 ;  and  what  a  romantic  effort  it  would 
have  been!  Jefferson  and  Burr,  most  romantic- 
minded  of  American  statesmen,  were  alike  in  seeing 
the  possibilities  of  the  great  West;  but  the  broad 
patriotism  of  Jefferson  brought  to  achievement  the 
Louisiana  Purchase  and  the  Lewis  and  Clarke  Expe- 
dition, whereas  Burr  expected  to  develop  the  West 
for  himself  or  not  at  all.    With  the  Mississippi  Val- 

286 


HAMILTON  AND  BUEE 


ley  he  would  have  united  Mexico,  then  ready  for  a 
strong  and  astute  ruler  to  assume  control. 

The  whole  episode  of  Blennerhasset  Island,  and 
Burr's  winning  of  the  profound  allegiance  of  the 
learned  Blennerhasset  and  his  attractive  wife,  who 
had  made  a  bookish  paradise  in  the  distant  wilder- 
ness, is  among  the  real  things  of  history  that  are  full 
of  what  seems  impossible  romance.  How  little  any 
one  could  have  suspected,  in  those  days  of  splendid 
dreams,  that  Mrs.  Blennerhasset  was  to  die,  in 
wretched  poverty,  in  New  York  City,  cared  for  in 
her  last  moments  by  a  Sister  of  Charity  who  learned 
of  her  plight,  and  that  Burr  himself,  with  all  his  am- 
bitions at  length  crushed,  was  to  creep  about  New 
York  in  the  shadow  of  straitened  means  and  scorn ! 

Men  and  munitions  were  gathered  there  on  the 
Ohio  Elver  island  for  the  beginning  of  the  attempt, 
and  the  flotilla  started  down  the  stream;  and  in  the 
bravery  of  it  all,  the  wonderful  picturesqueness,  the 
gay  insouciance,  one  almost  forgets  that  in  the  pro- 
jected seizing  of  New  Orleans,  and  making  it  the 
capital  of  the  Mississippi-Mexico  Empire,  Burr  was 
acting  treasonably. 

But  it  all  failed,  failed  absolutely,  and  although  the 
trial  of  Burr  for  treason  also  failed,  the  man  himself 
had  won  only  an  added  degree  of  distrust  and  dislike. 

He  went  to  England;  and  there  for  a  time  one  sees 
him  in  his  most  attractive  aspect,  meeting  the  literary 
and  the  artistic  and  walking  and  talking  with  rigid 
Jeremy  Bentham,  for  that  man  of  unclarity  of  ex- 
pression found  delight  in  the  absolute  clarity  of  Burr. 

287 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


And  now  Burr  learned  that  England  feared  him! 
Jefferson,  his  great  enemy,  who  had  carried  on  the 
bitterness  of  Hamilton,  was  now  President,  and  let 
it  be  quietly  intimated  to  England  that  she  was  har- 
boring a  man  with  Napoleon-like  ambitions;  where- 
upon Burr  was  asked  to  leave  the  country. 

Very  well,  he  would  go  to  France.  **But  no!'* 
Then  to  Ireland.  *  *  No,  a  thousand  times  no ! ' '  Then, 
asked  England,  suavely — how  her  mind  even  then 
ran  to  putting  opposition  leaders  on  rocky  islands ! — 

Won't  you  go  to  Helgoland?  It  is  a  pleasant  little 
island  with  fine  sea  breezes?" 

At  which  Burr  laughed,  and,  not  caring  for  a  rocky 
island,  accepted  instead  the  invitation  of  the  Swedish 
Minister  to  visit  Sweden,  whence  he  went  to  Paris, 
and  there  again  he  busied  himself  with  meeting  the 
literary  and  the  artistic  as  if  politics  and  ambition 
had  never  disturbed  his  mind. 

He  was  watched  closely  by  the  secret  police  of 
Napoleon,  who  were  quite  puzzled  by  him.  By  the 
great  Corsican  himself  America  was  always  taken 
very  seriously,  and  he  must  have  wondered  just  what 
Burr  was  planning  to  do,  and  meanwhile  was  frankly 
puzzled  by  the  presence  of  this  handsome  and  urbane 
American. 

After  a  while,  Burr  quietly  went  back  to  New  York 
again  and  again  took  up  the  practice  of  law,  but  he 
did  not  now  make  much  of  a  success  of  it,  as  great 
clients  stood  aloof,  for  the  public  mind  was  so  set 
against  him  that  although,  in  the  past,  courts  had 
scarcely  dared  decide  against  him,  it  was  now  the  case 

288 


HAMILTON  AND  BURE 


that  courts  scarcely  dared  decide  in  his  favor.  He 
went  quietly  about  the  city  in  an  atmosphere  of  aver- 
sion. Toward  the  end  of  his  long  life  he  married 
Madame  Jumel,  but  was  quickly  unmarried,  and  soon 
thereafter  went  to  his  grave. 


5| 


289 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

WHERE  MANY  THOUSANDS  DWELL 


ANY  thousands  still 
dwell  on  Manhattan  Is- 
land, in  spite  of  the 
spread  of  business  sec- 
tions and  the  immense 
increase  in  growth  of 
suburban  population ; 
in  fact,  Manhattan  is 
still  the  dwelling  place 
not  only  of  thousands 
but  of  many  hundreds  of  thousands;  but  other  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  prefer  to  live  in  the  other  boroughs 
or  in  the  surrounding  towns  near  by,  and  to  come  in, 
they  and  their  families,  for  business  and  for  a  great 
part  of  their  pleasure.  Those  who  do  not  live  within 
the  liniits  of  Manhattan  are  rather  disrespectfully  re- 
ferred to  as  sleeping  outside  of  the  city,''  by  the  true 
Manhattanite,  who  will  not  even  admit  Brooklyn 
to  the  fold,  although  in  the  late  nineties  Brooklyn 
became  officially  part  of  Greater  New  York  as  the 
Borough  of  Brooklyn.  It  had  long  been  the  third 
city  in  the  Union,  in  size,  but  was  quietly  absorbed, 

290 


WHERE  MANY  THOUSANDS  DWELL 


and  has  since  increased  hugely  in  size ;  subways  and 
new  bridges  have  opened  all  of  it  to  easy  access,  and 
its  once  marked  characteristic  of  miles  and  miles  of 
individual  homes  is  swiftly  changing  to  miles  and 
miles  of  apartment  houses,  and  whole  areas  of  tene- 
ments, filled  with  foreigners,  are  in  the  quiet  old 
streets  of  the  part  long  called  Williamsburgh. 

Plymouth  Church,  a  great  barnlike  structure  on 
Orange  Street,  is  by  far  the  most  famous  building  of 
Brooklyn,  for  it  was  for  forty  years  the  church  of  the 
most  eloquent  pulpit  orator  that  America  has  pro- 
duced. And  it  should  not  be  forgotten  that  Beecher 
won  his  way  superbly  in  England  and  was  there  a 
splendid  force  for  America  in  the  dark  days  of  our 
Civil  War. 

And  of  what  strange  characteristics  was  he  com- 
pounded— this  orator-preacher  who  liked  to  have  in 
front  of  him  at  dinner  a  dish  full  of  uncut  gems, 
for  the  sensuous  pleasure  of  running  his  fingers 
through  them,  and  feeling  them,  and  watching  them 
sparkle  and  glow!  But  he  was  more  than  a  great 
preacher  and  a  great  public  man ;  he  was  also  a  man 
of  vast  kindliness,  never  too  occupied  or  too  weary  to 
help  any  one  who  needed  help. 

Prospect  Park  is  something  else  of  which  Brook- 
lyn is  justly  proud,  for  it  is  so  big  and  so  attractive, 
and  it  includes  what  is  still  known  as  Battle  Pass, 
which  was  a  critical  point  in  the  Battle  of  Long  Is- 
land, and  its  principal  entrance  is  through  a  striking 
memorial  archway  set  up  in  honor  of  the  men  of  the 
Civil  War.    Brooklyn  has  also  an  important  and 

291 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


growing  museum,  and  it  has  Greenwood  Cemetery,  to 
which  every  visitor  to  New  York  from  other  parts  of 
the  country  w^as  expected  to  pilgrimage  in  the  good 
old  days. 

And  Brooklyn  has  a  great  Navy  Yard,  and  here, 
beside  it,  in  Wallabout  Bay,  were  moored  the  dread- 
ful prison-ships,  the  Jersey  and  others,  in  Eevo- 
lutionary  days :  and  in  Fort  Greene  Park  are  buried 
most  of  the  men  who  died  in  those  ships,  their  bodies 
having  been  long  ago  gathered  by  the  Tammany 
Society,  which  buried  them  here  with  honor.  I  think 
the  general  impression  in  regard  to  these  prison-ship 
martyrs — really  martyrs,  for  most  of  them  died 
through  cruelty  and  not  from  the  necessities  of  war 
conditions — is  that  there  were  but  a  few  men  in  all, 
but  in  reality  the  bones  of  fully  eleven  thousand  of 
them  rest  here.  The  horror  of  those  English  hulks 
made  an  indelible  impression  upon  the  people  of  all 
the  Thirteen  Colonies,  and  traditions  of  the  harrow- 
ing inhumanity  exist  to  this  day.  And  of  these  men 
Whitman,  with  noble  appreciation,  wrote: 

* '  Greater  than  memory  of  Achilles  or  Ulysses 
More,  more  by  far  to  thee  than  tomb  of  Alexander, 
Those  cart  loads  of  old  charnel  ashes,  scales  and  splints  of 
mouldy  bones, 

Once  living  men — once  resolute  courage,  aspiration,  strength, 
The  stepping  stones  to  thee  to-day  and  here,  America/' 

Two  miles  or  so  due  east  from  here,  still  within  the 
city  but  in  the  Borough  of  Queens,  is  Jamaica,  where, 
in  King  Park,  is  preserved  a  square-fronted  house 

292 


WHERE  MANY  THOUSANDS  DWELL 


with  a  gambrel  roof,  which  was  the  country  home  of 
Eufus  King,  who  was  one  of  the  first  two  United 
States  Senators  from  New  York,  and  Minister  to 
England  under  three  Presidents. 

Some  miles  to  the  northeast  of  Jamaica  is  ancient 
Flushing,  also  within  the  present  limits  of  the  city. 
It  was  settled  by  the  Dutch,  and  given  the  name  of 
Vlissingen,  in  honor  of  the  old  port  in  Holland,  Vlis- 
singen,  or  Flushing. 

Here  there  still  stands  a  very  ancient  house,  al- 
though not  quite  so  ancient  as  the  settlement,  and  it 
was  built  by  an  English  Quaker  named  John  Bowne. 
It  is  in  all  probability  the  very  oldest  building  in  or 
near  New  York.  It  was  built  in  1661 :  which  was  so 
long  ago  that  the  news  of  the  Stuart  Restoration  had 
scarcely  reached  this  country !  The  Dutch  ruled  New 
York  then,  but  shortly  thereafter  the  English  seized 
the  colony.  Fox,  the  great  Quaker  leader,  was  a 
guest  in  this  house  when  on  a  visit  to  America. 

It  is  a  smallish  house,  dormer-windowed,  a  house 
of  atmosphere,  and  in  some  curious  way  manages  to 
give  an  effect  of  quaint  Quakerism.  And  it  vividly, 
by  its  very  existence,  its  very  presence  here,  is  re- 
mindful of  the  far  distant  Dutch  rule. 

The  entire  Long  Island  portion  of  Greater  New 
York,  both  the  Borough  of  Queens  and  that  of  Brook- 
lyn, is  a  vast  district  of  homes:  and  not  only  is  it 
where  so  many  hundreds  of  thousands  sleep,  but  it  is 
where  many,  even  from  Manhattan,  sleep  their  final 
sleep,  for  Long  Island  has  been  given  many  a  ceme- 
tery.   Brooklyn  has,  in  particular,  Greenwood,  and 

293 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


there  are  great  areas  of  cemeteries  of  all  kinds  and 
qualities  in  the  Borough  of  Queens,  the  ferries  from 
Manhattan  to  Long  Island  City  and  Greenpoint  fre- 
quently having  two  or  three  funerals  at  one  time  on 
them,  with  other  carriages  left  on  the  pier  for  the  next 
boat.  It  is  stated  that  more  than  a  fifth  of  the  area 
of  Queen's  Borough  is  given  over  to  graveyards. 

Enormous  numbers  of  New  Yorkers  make  their 
homes  in  New  Jersey,  or  Jersey"  as  it  is  often 
called,  or  even  ^'the  Jerseys";  this  delightful  and 
old-fashioned-seeming  phrase  being  still  in  use;  and 
the  usage  has  meaning,  for  in  early  Colonial  days 
New  Jersey  was  long  divided  between  two  govern- 
ments, like  the  Carolinas. 

If  the  fact  of  being  in  another  State  had  not  pre- 
vented, a  great  number  of  the  New  Jersey  suburbs 
would  long  ago  have  been  taken  into  New  York  City, 
just  as  so  much  of  Long  Island  has  been  annexed  and 
what  is  known  as  the  Bronx,  the  great  annexed  ter- 
ritory beyond  the  Harlem  River,  with  its  half  mil- 
lion of  people. 

The  name  of  Bronx  comes  from  that  of  the  earliest 
settler  there,  Bronck,  who  is  on  record  as  having 
owned  six  white  shirts :  and  it  is  worth  while  to  re- 
member that  Morrisania,  an  old  manor,  and  then  a 
village  within  the  present  Bronx,  was  once  seriously 
proposed  to  Congress  as  the  Capital  of  the  United 
States,  and  that  City  Island,  which  is  also  in  the 
Bronx,  was  to  out-rival  Manhattan  in  business  pros- 
perity. 

Wolfert  Webber  lived  somewhere  in  Bronx-land, 

294 


WHERE  MANY  THOUSANDS  DWELL 


and,  as  imagined  by  Irving,  took  to  his  bed  from 
grief  when  he  learned  that  streets  were  to  be  cut 
through  his  property,  but  arose  joyously  when  his 
lawyer  explained  that  it  meant  fortune  and  not  ruin. 
Well,  streets  have  been  cut  through  the  Bronx,  streets 
infinite  in  number:  and  Irving  was  clearly  a  real- 
estate  prophet,  though  without  sufficient  confidence  in 
his  own  insight  to  get  real  estate  profit  out  of  it. 

Far  over  in  the  eastern  part  of  the  Bronx  is  Hutch- 
inson River,  reminder  of  the  fact  that  the  persecuted 
Anne  Hutchinson,  driven  from  New  England  with  her 
children,  made  her  home  near  this  bit  of  water,  and 
that  the  cabin  was  burned  by  the  Indians  and  she  and 
her  children  were  slain:  and  it  is  not  pleasant  to 
know  that  the  stern  Boston  clergy — it  was  at  the  time 
of  the  beginning  of  the  Cromwell  wars — offered  up 
thanks  because  ' '  God  had  made  a  heavy  example  of  a 
woful  woman." 

Within  the  present  Pelham  Bay  Park,  Colonel 
Glover,  with  only  seven  or  eight  hundred  men,  halted 
a  force  of  some  four  thousand  under  Lord  Howe,  for 
a  long  enough  time  to  permit  Washington  to  make  a 
move  towards  White  Plains :  and  in  1814  two  British 
gunboats  bombarded  American  batteries  located  in 
what  is  now  this  park — this  being  the  last  time  that 
British  guns  were  hostilely  heard  in  New  York. 

In  Eastchester  still  stands  a  charmingly  attractive 
old  church,  that  of  St.  Paul's,  built  in  1765,  and  still 
looking  out  over  the  ancient  churchyard,  with  its  flock 
of  old  white  stones,  which  date  back  many  years  be- 
fore this  to  the  time  of  a  still  earlier  St.  PauPs.  It 

295 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


is  a  romantic-looking  church  of  field  stone,  a  high- 
shouldered  church,  with  a  square  tower  set  in  front, 
topped  with  a  little  white  belfry;  the  kind  of  old- 
fashioned  church  and  churchyard  that  makes  you 
think  of  the  curfew  which  tolls  the  knell  of  parting 
day  and  of  lowing  herds  winding  slowly  o'er  the  lea, 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  this  charming  reminder  of  the 
past  is  now  threatened  with  eclipse  through  changing 
surroundings. 

The  Bronx  also  has  great  Botanical  Gardens  and  a 
Zoological  Garden,  which  are  largely  under  the  city's 
control ;  and  it  is  believed  that  nowhere  are  wild  ani- 
mals exhibited  in  such  a  striking  and  extensive  en- 
vironment of  trees  and  rocks  and  water. 

So  immense  is  the  area  of  the  city  that  the  suburbs 
do  not  begin  until  one  is  miles  away  from  the  city's 
center.  Except  for  Jersey  City  and  Hoboken,  which 
are  independent  cities  rather  than  places  of  suburban 
living,  the  suburbs  of  New  York  do  not  begin  within 
less  than  a  dozen  miles  or  so;  whereas  with  other 
cities  with  important  suburbs,  such  as  Boston  and 
Philadelphia,  the  suburbs  mainly  end  within  a  dozen 
miles.  New  York,  beginning  its  suburbs  at  the  dozen 
miles,  claims  suburbanites  and  commuters  from  far- 
flung  towns  that  are  forty  or  even  fifty  miles 
away. 

To  the  eye  of  the  trained  New  Yorker,  one  who  has 
opportunity  to  know  all  types  and  who  has  habituated 
himself  to  look  closely  at  them,  there  are  certain 
marks  of  differentiation.  The  Westchester  family 
can  usually  be  picked  from  the  family  of  New  Jersey, 

296 


WHERE  MANY  THOUSANDS  DWELL 


and  the  New  Jersey  family  from  that  of  suburban 
Long  Island;  and  the  Brooklyn  family  is  in  a  class 
by  itself. 

New  Rochelle,  up  the  Sound  a  little  beyond  Pelham 
Bay  Park,  touches  the  imagination  because  of  its 
having  been  settled,  in  the  long  ago,  by  Huguenots 
who  fled  from  religious  persecution  in  France  after 
the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes.  The  visitor 
finds  few  reminders  of  those  early  times,  but  the  blood 
of  those  long-ago  Huguenots  is  a  prized  strain  in 
some  of  the  leading  New  York  families. 

New  Rochelle  represents  religious  persecution ;  but 
it  also  is  remindful  of  something  very  like  irreligious 
persecution,  for  the  brilliant  Thomas  Paine,  he  of  the 
*  ^  times  that  tried  men 's  souls, '  ^  was  given  by  Congress 
a  confiscated  estate  of  three  hundred  acres  at  the  edge 
of  the  village  of  New  Rochelle  for  his  services  in 
the  course  of  the  Revolution,  and  he  lived  there  for  a 
time,  but  did  not  find  the  place  entirely  congenial  as 
a  home,  his  beliefs  making  him  persona  non  grata  to 
the  leading  people ;  whereupon  he  went  to  New  York, 
and  thence  to  its  Greenwich  Village,  and  it  was  there 
in  Greenwich  that  he  died. 

His  last  request  was  that  he  be  buried  by  the  Quak- 
ers, his  father  having  been  one  of  that  sect,  but  on 
account  of  his  infidel  opinions  the  Quakers  refused 
the  request.  His  poor  funeral  on  the  long,  lonely 
journey  from  Greenwich  Village  to  his  New  Rochelle 
farm,  has  been  described,  with  brief  eloquence,  by 
Ingersoll:  **In  the  carriage,  a  woman  and  her  son 
who  had  lived  on  the  bounty  of  the  dead — on  horse- 

297 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


back  a  Quaker  the  humanity  of  whose  heart  domi- 
nated the  creed  of  his  head — and  following  on  foot, 
two  negroes,  filled  with  gratitude. '  ^ 

Strange  as  was  Paine  *s  career  in  America,  in  Eng- 
land, in  France — ^in  France  he  was  elected  a  deputy 
to  the  National  Convention,  and  when  Louis  the  Six- 
teenth was  tried  urged  that  his  life  be  spared  and 
that  he  be  sent  to  America — the  most  striking  event 
of  his  extraordinary  career  was,  to  use  a  Hibernian- 
ism,  something  he  did  not  do,  for  he  was  chosen,  by 
Napoleon,  to  arrange  and  introduce  a  popular  form  of 
government  for  Great  Britain  after  he.  Napoleon, 
should  have  conquered  the  island! 

After  he  had  been  buried  on  his  farm  in  New  Ro- 
chelle  for  some  years,  his  friend,  the  English  agitator, 
William  Cobbett,  decided  to  remove  his  bones  to 
England;  and  he  actually  got  them  over  there,  in  a 
bag ;  that  they  were  *  4n  a  bag ' '  has  been  remembered ; 
but  he  seems  to  have  mislaid  the  bag  of  bones  some- 
where, perhaps  forgot  it  in  hurrying  out  from  some 
inn  to  catch  a  stage,  in  which  case  one  may  imagine 
the  disappointment  of  the  waiter  who  examined  it. 
And  thus  vanished  *^Tom''  Paine. 

Paine 's  home  in  New  Eochelle  is  still  standing,  and 
maintained  as  a  museum:  a  pleasant  cottage  stand- 
ing in  a  hollow  beside  the  present  level  of  the  road ; 
an  attractive-looking  old  house,  shingle-sided,  green- 
shuttered,  with  a  pleasant  garden  beside  it  with  old- 
fashioned  flowers. 

A  romantic  memory  of  New  Rochelle  is  that  the 

298 


WHERE  MANY  THOUSANDS  DWELL 


Huguenots,  before  they  had  built  a  church  for  them- 
selves there,  used  to  walk  to  New  York,  on  Com- 
munion Sundays,  to  worship  at  a  church  of  their 
faith ;  and  they  sang  together  old  French  hymns  and 
chorals,  as  they  walked  the  long  and  weary  way ;  and 
it  is  a  picture  that  remains  with  one  and  shows  what 
manner  of  men  the  early  settlers  of  the  Empire  State 
were.  The  road  has  little  to  remind  one,  now,  of  that 
early  day;  but  still,  in  fancy,  one  hears  those  French 
voices.    It  is  romance  at  our  very  doors. 

The  church  in  New  York  to  which  they  used  to  walk 
was  that  of  St.  Esprit ;  it  was  built  in  1688,  in  Petti- 
coat Lane,  now  Marketfield  Street,  beside  the  Produce 
Exchange.  Afterwards  the  congregation  worshiped 
for  one  hundred  and  thirty  years  on  Pine  Street,  and 
are  now  located  at  45  East  27th  Street ;  and  the  service 
is  still  held  in  the  French  tongue,  just  as  the  Huguenot 
service  survives  in  the  crypt  of  Canterbury  Cathedral 
in  England. 

The  commuters  of  to-day  would  not  care  to  walk 
to  New  York  from  New  Rochelle,  or  from  any  of 
the  myriad  other  suburban  towns  from  which  they 
come  in,  six  mornings  of  the  week,  filling  every  seat 
of  innumerable  trains.  And  suburban  living  has  im- 
mensely increased  through  the  influence  of  the  motor- 
car, which  has  added  such  unexpected  pleasures  and 
possibilities  to  home  life  away  from  the  city. 

Of  course,  the  kind  of  suburban  living  that  ties 
down  the  father  to  a  life  divided  between  office  hours 
and  travel  hours  has  its  disadvantages :  one  of  them 

299 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


being  the  slight  acquaintance  that  can  come  between 
himself  and  his  family :  and  it  is  not  entirely  humor 
which  makes  the  basis  of  this  story  told  me  as  true, 
about  a  small  boy  over  in  New  Jersey,  who  was  being 
most  carefully  and  particularly  brought  up  by  his 
devoted  parents.  He  had  reached  the  age  of  six  with- 
out such  an  unhygienic  thing  as  a  pet  when  the  ice- 
man, who  was  sorry  for  him,  brought  him  a  pup,  a 
genuine  one  with  a  short  tail,  a  real  bark  and  great 
devotion.  The  small  boy  loved  the  pup  at  sight  and 
his  parents  had  to  yield  and  let  him  keep  it.  It  was 
named  Paddy  in  honor  of  the  iceman  and  came  to  be 
the  object  of  the  boy's  devoted  love. 

One  day  when  the  boy  was  away,  the  dog  was  run 
over  by  an  automobile  and  killed.  The  mother,  think- 
ing there  would  be  great  grief  and  distress  when  her 
small  son  learned  of  it,  waited  until  the  boy  had  had 
his  supper  and  then  said :  ^*My  son,  I  have  news  that 
will  grieve  you.  This  afternoon  your  Paddy  was 
killed  by  an  automobile. ' ' 

The  boy  looked  at  his  plate  and  then  at  his  mother 
and  said:  am  very  sorry."  Then,  quietly  after 
a  pause :    ^ '  May  I  go  out  and  tell  the  boys  ? ' ' 

He  was  gone  half  an  hour  and  came  back  and  went 
quietly  upstairs  with  his  nurse  to  go  to  bed.  Sud- 
denly there  were  wild  cries  and  wails  from  the  bed- 
room, loud  and  many  of  them,  and  his  mother  went 
upstairs  two  steps  at  a  time. 

* '  Mother,  mother,  Paddy  is  dead ! "  he  cried. 

*  *  Yes,  my  son,  but  why  are  you  so  excited  now?  He 

300 


WHERE  MANY  THOUSANDS  DWELL 

is  no  more  dead  than  when  I  told  you  about  it  an 
hour  ago. ' ' 

**Yes,  I  know  you  told  me — sobbed  the  boy — **but 
I  did  not  understand — I  thought  you  said  Daddy  was 
dead.'' 


301 


CHAPTER  XXIV 


UP  THE  HUDSON 

HE  viewpoint  of  the  Dutch  of 
New  Amsterdam  of  three  hun- 
dred years  ago  was  always  dis- 
tinctly their  own.  For  exam- 
ple, when  they  made  the  pali- 
saded wall  which  in  time  gave 
name  to  Wall  Street,  it  was 
not  as  a  precaution  against  In- 
dians, but  to  provide  a  defense 
against  the  probable  advance 
of  New  Englanders,  who  were 
expected  to  come  sweeping  down  from  Massachusetts 
and  Connecticut.  "When  they  named  the  Hudson  the 
North  River,  thus  geographically  puzzling  the  gen- 
erations, it  was  not  because  of  any  relation  of  the 
river  to  New  York,  but  because  it  was  the  principal 
stream  along  the  northern  part  of  the  Dutch  posses- 
sions, just  as  the  Delaware,  the  South  River  as  they 
called  it,  was  the  principal  stream  in  the  other  direc- 
tion. 

The  North  River  was  slow  in  coming  to  prominence, 
except  as  a  waterway  to  Albany.  Verazzano  must 
have  sailed  up  far  enough  to  see  the  Palisades,  be- 

302 


UP  THE  HUDSON 


cause,  in  his  description,  he  tells  of  the  steep  hills'' 
from  amid  which  there  ran  down  to  the  sea  **an  ex- 
ceeding great  stream  of  water/'  But  there  was  no 
farming  country  along  the  river 's  banks ;  there  were 
just  the  swampy  *  *  Jersey  Meadows, ' '  behind  the  Pali- 
sades, and  then  miles  and  miles  of  wonderful  scenery. 

The  ice  remained  longer  in  the  North  River  than  in 
the  East,  because  the  East  River  is  mainly  salt  water 
and  the  North  mainly  fresh;  in  addition,  Manhattan 
Island,  on  the  side  toward  the  Hudson,  had  much  of 
swamp  and  sluggish  water  and  hills,  and  was  a  region 
not  to  be  compared,  for  practical  development,  with 
that  on  the  eastern  side  of  the  island,  therefore  busi- 
ness and  residences  sought,  for  a  long  time,  the  east- 
ward side. 

But  at  length  the  North  River  won  supremacy.  It 
won  the  most  important  ferries.  It  won  the  great 
ocean  steamers.  The  total  mileage  of  docks  of  the  en- 
tire harbor  of  New  York  is  more  than  double  that  of 
London,  and  more  than  four  times  that  of  Liverpool. 

In  one  particular,  that  of  ferries,  there  are  fewer 
boats  in  the  New  York  waters  than  there  were,  for  the 
great  under-river  tunnels  are  more  and  more  taking 
their  place ;  but  the  ferries  are  more  than  replaced  by 
an  increase  in  other  ships.  The  ferries  were  a  fea- 
ture in  New  York  life  that  mightily  struck  the  fancy 
of  Walt  Whitman ;  they  afforded  him,  as  he  expressed 
it,  *  ^  inimitable,  streaming,  never-failing  living 
poems." 

As  you  go  up  the  great  Hudson,  you  pass,  on  the 
right,  old  Greenwich  and  Chelsea,  and  on  the  left  the 

303 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YO'KK 


heights  of  Weehawken,  where  used  to  be  the  duehng 
ledge. 

The  long  stretch  of  Eiverside  Park  is  passed,  with 
Grant's  Tomb  looming  lofty  and  grand;  and  on  the 
left  one  sees  the  Palisades,  basalt  cliffs  rising 
abruptly  for  miles  from  the  river's  edge;  and  in  the 
distance  looms  Indian  Head,  misty  and  mysterious 
and  pictorial. 

There  is  constantly  increasing  beauty  and  in  a  few 
miles  Yonkers  is  reached;  and  it  is  a  place  of  fasci- 
nating memories,  for  here,  as  a  girl  and  as  a  young 
woman,  lived  that  Mary  Philip se  whom  Washington 
loved  and  whom  he  wished  to  marry.  He  was  then 
only  twenty-four,  but  was  staider  and  steadier  than 
his  years  by  reason  of  his  early  meeting  important 
responsibilities,  and  Mary  Philipse  on  her  part,  then 
twenty-six,  was  probably  younger  than  her  years,  for 
she  was  rich,  lived  in  a  beautiful  home,  was  univer- 
sally admired,  and  had  a  host  of  friends. 

The  old  Philipse  Manor  Hall  still  stands,  in  Yon- 
kers, in  the  heart  of  a  business  district  which  in  noth- 
ing else  displays  any  romantic  tendency;  but  a 
portrait  oi  Mary  Philipse  herself  shows  her  as  an 
exceedingly  wholesome  young  woman,  dressed  decol- 
lete, with  eyes  which  seem  demurely  alight  with  fun. 
The  rose  on  the  bodice,  the  sloping  shoulders,  the 
short  curls  piquantly  in  front  of  the  ears,  the  little 
flat  lace  cap  with  bow  tied  primly  beneath  the  chin,  the 
long  nose,  the  high-arched  brows,  the  candor  of  ex- 
pression, all  these  assist  in  showing  why  the  suscep- 
tible George  liked  her.    And  another  reason  for  lik- 

304 


UP  THE  HUDSON 


ing  her  was  that  she  was  the  daughter  of  a  very  great 
family  and  at  the  same  time  wealthy  in  her  own  right. 

The  old  Manor  Hall  was  built  in  1682  by  artisans 
imported  from  England  for  the  finest  work,  and  was 
enlarged  in  the  following  century.  The  greater  part 
of  its  splendid  gardens  and  hedges,  which  ran  down 
to  the  Hudson,  which  was  then  in  full  view,  long  since 
disappeared,  but  even  yet  there  is  a  general  air  of 
charm  and  spaciousness,  and  the  house  is  interesting 
even  in  the  midst  of  uninteresting  surroundings, 
standing  as  it  does  with  towering  old  horse-chestnuts 
beside  it,  w^ith  green  grass  round  about,  with  thriving 
old  box  bushes  at  the  southern  doorway,  and  with  a 
hedge  of  privet.  The  shutters  of  solid  wood,  the 
balustraded  hip-roof,  the  dormer  windows,  the 
pillared  and  dentiled  little  porticoes,  the  broad  door 
opening  in  Dutch  fashion  in  two  halves  (for  the 
original  Philipse  of  over  a  century  before  the  Eevo- 
lution  was  himself  a  Dutchman),  instantly  rouse  in- 
terest. 

The  great  fireplaces  still  remain.  There  is  wealth 
of  ancient  paneling  and  cornices,  and  the  main  stair- 
case is  notable  among  American  staircases,  with  its 
great  twirl  around  the  newel  post  and  its  twirled 
baluster  and  banister-rail  with  a  charming  ramp. 
There  are  delightfully  suggestive  window  seats;  and 
always  one  thinks  of  Washington  and  Mary  Philipse. 

It  was  a  place  of  splendid  hospitality.  In  the 
garret  were  quarters  for  fifty  servants.  Distin- 
guished visitors  and  travelers,  who  arrived  in  New 
York,  were,  as  a  matter  of  course,  asked  to  visit  here 

305 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


at  Yonkers.  And  so  it  naturally  happened  that 
"Washington  was  invited,  as  he  was  a  distinguished 
young  Virginian  and  officer;  and  in  addition,  he  was 
a  close  friend  of  Beverly  Robinson,  also  a  Virginian, 
who  had  married  Mary  Philipse^s  sister. 

It  is  one  of  the  most  curious  facts  in  regard  to  New 
York  City,  that  not  only  was  George  Washington  con- 
nected with  many  of  the  most  important  happenings 
in  its  history,  but  almost  every  old  building,  that  has 
been  preserved  in  or  near  the  city,  had  some  interest- 
ing connection  with  his  career. 

It  was  in  1756  that  Washington  was  at  Yonkers. 
He  was  then  in  the  military  service,  and  was  on  his 
way  to  Boston  to  confer  with  Governor  Shirley  in  re- 
gard to  some  military  matters  and  also  to  describe  to 
Shirley  the  circumstances  of  the  death  of  his  son  at 
Braddock's  defeat — a  trip  which  gave  Washington  in- 
valuable information  in  regard  to  Boston,  where  he 
was  to  be  in  command,  and  besieging  the  British, 
twenty  years  later. 

For  that  early  trip  to  Boston  Washington  had 
equipped  himself  with  even  more  than  usual  mag- 
nificence; with  gold  lace,  with  silk  stockings  and 
ruffled  shirts,  with  blue  velvet  and  broadcloth ;  and  he 
was  accompanied  on  the  trip  by  two  white  servants, 
each  dressed  in  complete  livery,  with  much  of  scarlet, 
and  each  wearing  a  silver-laced  hat.  And  it  is  inter- 
esting to  know  that  Washington's  horse  was  elabor- 
ately outfitted  with  the  Washington  crest  on  the 
housings.  For  his  own  use  the  young  officer,  a  gay 
cavalier  indeed,  also  had  with  him  three  gold-and- 

306 


UP  THE  HUDSON 


scarlet  sword-knots,  three  silver-and-blue  sword- 
knots  and  a  gold-laced  hat. 

And  somehow,  when  one  thinks  of  his  seemingly 
ceaseless  sartorial  solicitude,  there  come  to  mind  the 
lines  of  the  irreverent  versifier  who  wrote : 

George  Washington  worked  hard,  they  say, 
And  went  unshaved  on  many  a  weary  tramp, 
And  very  seldom  looked  the  way 
He  does  upon  a  postage  stamp. ' ' 

Washington  stayed  in  New  York  and  Yonkers  from 
February  18  to  25,  and  for  much  of  that  time,  in  both 
places,  was  in  the  company  of  members  of  the 
Philipse  family.  His  diary  mentions  his  expenses  on 
the  trip,  and  several  items  are  for  the  entertaining  of 

ladies''  in  New  York;  among  other  things,  he  took 
the  ladies,  one  of  whom  was  Mary  Philipse,  to  a  play 
called  **The  Microcosm."  He  also  notes  the  spend- 
ing of  considerable  sums  for  new  clothes — he  being 
neither  the  first  man  nor  the  last  to  spend  money  on 
ladies  and  new  clothes  in  New  York ! 

There  can  be  no  positive  proof  that  Washington 
wished  to  marry  Mary  Philipse.  He  was  a  gentle- 
man, and  not  even  in  his  diary,  to  which  he  confided 
so  much,  did  he  set  down  that  he  had  proposed  to 
Mary  Philipse  and  had  been  refused;  neither  did 
Mary  Philipse,  w^ho  was  a  lady,  make  it  public  that 
Washington  had  asked  her  to  be  his  mfe;  but  that 
all  this  was  really  the  case,  is  as  certain  as  anything 
very  well  can  be,  and  is  very  much  more  certain  than 
the  greater  part  of  what  generally  passes  for  history. 

307 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


Washington  called  again  on  the  Philipse  family  on 
his  return,  through  New  York,  southward,  and  when 
he  reluctantly  left  he  asked  a  friend  to  keep  him 
advised  as  to  what  might  happen,  and  after  a  while 
this  friend,  who  was  Joseph  Chew  of  New  London, 
Connecticut,  a  frequent  visitor  to  New  York  and  a 
fellow  guest  with  Washington  at  Beverly  Eobinson's, 
wrote  several  letters  to  Washington  in  one  of  which 
he  gave  the  information  that  ' '  Colonel  Eoger  Morris 
was  pressing  his  suit,''  which  tailor-like  warning  was 
followed  by  strong  advice  to  take  action.  With  the 
free  and  easy  capitalization  of  the  time,  he  wrote: 

**How  can  you  be  Excused  to  Continue  so  long  at 
Philadelphia?  I  think  I  should  have  made  a  kind  of 
Flying  march  of  it  if  it  had  been  only  to  have  seen 
whether  the  Works  were  sufficient  to  withstand  a 
Vigorous  Attack — you,  a  Soldier  and  a  Lover.  I 
will  not  be  wanting  to  let  Miss  Polly"  (by  which 
name  he  usually  referred  to  Mary  Philipse)  ^^know 
the  sincere  Regard  a  Friend  of  mine  has  for  her  and 
I  am  sure  if  she  had  my  Eyes  to  see  thro,  she  would 
Prefer  him  to  all  others." 

The  descendants  of  Mary  Philipse  in  England  long 
retained,  and  believed,  the  story  that  Washington, 
on  receipt  of  this  letter,  hurried  to  New  York,  and, 
arriving  there  on  a  winter's  evening,  sought  and  ob- 
tained an  interview  with  Mary  Philipse  at  once,  but 
only  to  find  that  she  was  already  the  promised  wife 
of  his  rival,  Eoger  Morris. 

Eoger  Morris  had  been  a  fellow  soldier  with 
Washington  in  the  Braddock  campaign,  and  after  his 

308 


UP  THE  HUDSON 


marriage  served  under  Wolfe  at  the  capture  of 
Quebec.  He  and  his  wife  together  planned  and  built 
the  house  on  Manhattan  Island  which  is  usually 
referred  to  as  the  Jumel  Mansion.  Close  to  beautiful 
Lake  Mahopac,  which  lay  within  the  tract  of  forty 
thousand  acres  that  Mary  Philip se  owned  in  her  own 
right,  they  made  a  little  summer  lodge,  whose  foun- 
dations may  still  be  seen,  overgrown  by  a  tangle  of 
vines. 

To  the  entire  Philipse  connection  the  Eevolution 
brought  disaster.  Their  property  was  confiscated, 
and  they  fled  to  England  under  penalty  of  death 
should  they  return.  The  grim  proclamation  may  still 
be  read,  specifying  not  only  the  men  of  the  Philipse 
family,  with  Beverly  Eobinson  and  Roger  Morris, 
but,  also  by  name,  Susannah  Eobinson  and  Mary 
Morris,  the  two  sisters  of  Frederick  Philipse,  Lord 
of  the  Manor,  for  the  two  sisters  were  each  of  them 
immense  holders  of  real  estate  in  their  own  right; 
the  unfamiliar-seeming  ^^Mary  Morris"  being,  of 
course,  she  who  had  been  Mary  Philipse. 

In  the  solemn  quiet  of  the  ancient  cathedral  of 
Chester,  in  Wales,  there  was  called  to  my  attention, 
as  an  American,  a  forgotten  tablet  set  into  one  of  the 
great  pillars,  a  tablet  which,  with  measured  and 
lengthy  phrasing,  tells  that  it  was  placed  there  in 
memory  of  Frederick  Philipse.  It  sets  forth  his 
domestic  and  religious  virtues,  his  devotion  to  his 
King,  his  great  losses  for  loyalty,  his  fleeing  for  life 
from  his  confiscated  estates;  but  I  noticed  also  that 
in  the  record  of  self-sacrifice  it  could  only  mention 

309 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


that  he  had  fled,  not  that  he  had  fought,  and  that  it 
did  not  refer  to  the  fact  that  the  English  government 
paid  him,  when  an  exile  in  England,  the,  at  that  time, 
enormous  sum  of  sixty  thousand  pounds  as  at  least  a 
partial  recompense  for  his  losses. 

Eoger  Morris,  a  banished  man,  though  frankly- 
opposed  to  the  war,  died  while  the  man  whom  he  had 
rivaled  was  President.  And  Mary  Philipse  herself, 
his  widow,  died  in  1825,  at  the  great  age  of  ninety- 
five;  and  both  husband  and  wife  are  buried  in  old 
York  of  England  instead  of  in  the  New  York  of  their 
early  lives. 

In  1776,  before  the  confiscation  and  while  there  was 
danger  of  the  horses  and  cattle  of  the  Philipse  estate 
being  seized  by  American  soldiers,  Washington  wrote 
to  the  wife  of  Mary's  brother,  Frederick  Philipse, 
the  Lord  of  the  Manor,  he  being  absent  and  Mrs. 
Philipse  being  in  charge  of  the  estate,  assuring  her 
that  every  possible  consideration  would  be  show, 
and  adding  briefly,  as  a  postscript,  beg  the  favor 
of  having  my  compliments  presented  to  Mrs.  Morris.'* 

On  the  walls  of  the  ancient  house  is  a  collection  of 
portraits  of  distinguished  Americans ;  they  are  paint- 
ings by  Sully  and  Eembrandt  Peale  and  Copley,  and 
others,  including  even  Gilbert  Stuart;  a  few  are 
copies  and  the  others  are  originals;  there  are  por- 
traits of  such  men  as  Laurence  and  Lee,  Jefferson 
and  Monroe,  General  Gates  and  General  Knox,  and 
there  is  even  what  claims  to  be  a  portrait  of  Benjamin 
Franklin  by  Benjamin  West:  in  all,  a  fascinating 
galaxy. 

310 


UP  THE  HUDSON  \ 

Beyond  Yonkers,  at  Dobbs*  Ferry,  is  what  is  left 
of  the  old  Livingston  mansion ;  near  here  the  French 
soldiers  under  Rochambeau  joined  the  American 
forces;  here  the  papers  were  signed  by  Washington 

and  Sir  Guy  Carleton  for  the  evacuation  of  New  j 

York;  opposite  this  point,  on  May  8,  1783,  a  British  ; 

sloop  of  war  fired  the  first  salute  given  by  Great  j 

Britain  in  recognition  of  the  government  of  America.  j 

A  little  beyond  Dobbs  ^  Ferry  the  Hudson  opens  out  j 

into  the  superb  Tappan  Zee  with  its  width  of  three  < 

miles ;  and  on  the  right,  at  the  beginning  of  the  Zee,  ^ 

is  Irvington,  where  still  stands  Sunnyside,  the  de-  1 

lightful  house  so  kept  in  loving  memory  as  the  home  j 

most  associated  with  Washington  Irving.  ' 

It  was  built  after  the  Revolution  on  the  site  of  a  i 

preceding  house  which  had  been  burned  by  the  j 

British ;  it  was  a  little  farmhouse  when  Irving  bought  i 

it,  and  he  named  it  Wolfert^s  Roost,  and  described  it  ) 

in  one  of  his  stories.  He  gradually  rebuilt  and  en-  \ 
larged  the  place  to  its  present  dimensions.    It  is 

freely  ornamented  with  corbels  on  the  gables,  remind-  i 

ful  of  the  Dutch,  and  has  a  sort  of  Spanish  tower  at  ) 

one  side,  reminiscent  of  his  residence  in  Spain  as  ^ 

United  States  Minister.  i 

The  house  stands  on  a  level  spot  just  a  little  above 
the  river;  it  is  a  sort  of  day  dream  of  peacefulness, 
a  stone  house,  low-set,  rambling,  many-gabled,  ivy- 
clad.    Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  houses  often 

express  the  character  of  their  owners,  and  this  house  : 
is  to  this  day  expressive  of  its  romantic,  traveled, 
imaginative,  fireside-loving  owner. 

311  i 


i 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


Irving 's  own  description  of  it  before  he  made  the 
alterations  was  as  a  little  old-fashioned  stone  man- 
sion, all  made  up  of  gable  ends,  and  as  full  of  angles 
and  corners  as  an  old  cocked  haf ;  and  this  word 
*  kittle,"  used  more  as  a  term  of  endearment  than  as 
literally  descriptive,  although  it  might  have  fairly 
described  the  house  before  he  began  his  enlarge- 
ments, certainly  does  not  well  describe  the  house  at 
the  present  time,  except  by  contrast  with  the  huge 
erections,  its  neighbors,  the  homes  of  the  rich  folk  of 
the  present  day. 

Less  than  three  miles  above  Irvington,  and  looking 
out  upon  the  Tappan  Zee  in  its  broadest  part,  is 
Tarrytown,  beloved  of  wealthy  folk  and  especially  of 
the  Rockefellers;  a  town  placed  in  a  setting  of  ex- 
quisite beauty. 

All  of  this  region,  along  the  Hudson,  glimmers 
softly  in  the  twilight  of  romance,  for  it  is  so  fascinat- 
ing in  itself  and  in  its  legends  and  has  been  so 
touched  with  unforgetable  beauty  by  the  pen  of 
Irving.  A  magnificent  motoring  roadway,  lined  by 
residences,  leads  on  parallel  to  the  river,  and  is 
never  very  far  from  the  waterside,  along  the  line 
of  the  old  post-road;  and  a  monument,  surmounted 
by  the  figure  of  a  watching  scout,  is  noticed,  and  you 
stop  and  look  at  its  inscription — and  you  feel  a  swift 
thrill,  and  in  an  instant  the  present  has  vanished  and 
you  are  back  in  the  distant  past,  for  this  marks  the 
spot  where  Major  Andre  was  stopped  by  the  three 
American  scouts.   And  what  a  picture  vividly  comes ! 

312 


UP  THE  HUDSON 


— the  annoyed  and  gradually  very  much  concerned 
major,  and  the  ragged  Americans  searching  this  very 
fine  gentleman  and  finding  the  proofs  of  his  disgrace- 
ful dealings  with  a  traitor. 

And  in  particular  comes  the  picture  of  one  of  the 
three,  who  wears  a  long  green  shabby  coat,  for  with- 
out this  coat  there  would  have  been  no  arrest.  For 
Paulding,  one  of  the  scouts,  had  been  a  prisoner  in 
one  of  the  dreadful  New  York  military  prisons,  and 
had  made  his  escape  through  the  aid  of  a  negro  wo- 
man whose  sympathy  he  had  won  and  who  had  been 
able  to  give  him  a  Hessian  green  coat  as  a  disguise  to 
escape  in — and  this  coat  Paulding  was  still  wearing, 
and  it  was  this  which  caused  Andre,  when  unexpect- 
edly stopped  here,  so  near  the  British  lines,  to  declare 
at  once  that  he  was  English. 

Immediately  above  the  scene  of  Andre's  capture  is 
Sleepy  Hollow :  name  of  delicious  memory,  for  this  is 
the  region  where  Ichabod  Crane  seems  to  be  forever 
galloping  on,  even  though  the  original  bridge  over 
which  he  and  the  Headless  Horseman  clattered  has 
vanished  and  even  though  the  road  itself  has  here 
been  slightly  changed  from  its  original  line.  And 
the  name  of  Sleepy  Hollow  evokes  also  the  picture  of 
others  of  the  Irving  creations,  for  even  though  they 
did  not  live  precisely  here.  Sleepy  Hollow  is  the  name 
which  seems  most  to  represent  them. 

The  atmosphere  of  it  all  is  still  here,  and  here  is 
Sleepy  Hollow  Cemetery,  with  its  ancient  little 
church,  and  with  its  names  of  Dutch  magnates  of  the 

313 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


early  days.  And  that  Washington  Irving  himself  is 
buried  in  this  graveyard,  not  far  from  the  little  old 
church,  is  the  finest  and  sweetest  of  memories. 

*'Here  lies  the  gentle  humorist,  who  died 
In  the  bright  Indian  Summer  of  his  fame ! 
A  simple  stone,  with  but  a  date  and  name, 
Marks  his  secluded  resting-place  beside 
The  river  that  he  loved  and  glorified. ' ' 

*^A  drowsy,  dreamy  influence  seems  to  hang  over 
the  land^':  thus  Irving  himself  wrote  of  it,  and  the 
words  may  still  be  used,  in  spite  of  millionaires  and 
non-millionaires,  in  spite  of  modern  homes  and  whiz- 
zing motors;  for  mountain  and  stream  and  sky  and 
forest  still  give  the  region  an  air  of  loneliness. 

Ten  miles  above  Tarrytown,  on  the  other  side  of 
the  river,  a  rocky,  thickly-wooded,  slender-necked 
peninsula  juts  prominently  into  the  stream:  it  is 
well  above  the  water,  but  has  no  height  when  com- 
pared with  that  of  the  surrounding  mountains.  Rem- 
nants of  fortifications  are  still  plainly  to  be  found — 
and  this  is  Stony  Point,  the  scene  of  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  military  assaults  of  all  history.  Anthony 
Wayne  led  the  Americans,  following  a  plan  carefully 
devised  by  Washington.  **I11  storm  hell  if  you'll 
plan  it ! ''  declared  Wayne ;  whereupon,  with  a  twinkle : 

Hadn't  we  better  try  Stony  Point  first?" 

On  the  eastern  side  of  the  river,  diagonally  across 
from  Stony  Point,  is  a  broad  low  projection  called 
Verplanck's  Point;  and  here  was  a  great  level  drill- 
ing ground,  which,  more  than  any  other  place,  is  asso- 

314 


UP  THE  HUDSON 


ciated  with  the  invaluable  drilling  given  to  the  Con- 
tinental troops  by  the  immensely  capable  Baron 
Steuben. 

Should  you  wander  over  Verplanck's  Point  you 
would  find,  for  it  is  of  great  extent,  fields  and  mead- 
ows and  woody  paths  and  clay  banks,  and  here  and 
there  some  shabby  ancient  house;  on  the  whole,  the 
district  is  not  very  different  from  what  it  was  in  Rev- 
olutionary days,  except  that  it  shows  less  of  comfort- 
able living  and  more  of  brickmaking.  Looking  at 
Verplanck's  from  the  river  you  see  the  old-time  road 
leading  down  to  the  gravelly  ferry  landing  of  the  old 
King^s  Ferry,  so  vitally  important  in  the  Revolu- 
tionary War.  So  much  is  the  present  aspect  like  the 
aspect  of  the  past,  that  the  past  seems  very,  very  real. 

The  river  twists  among  the  mountains,  great  black 
mountains,  massed  with  trees,  that  tower  up  rug- 
gedly from  the  very  water  ^s  edge.  And  of  course 
such  a  wild  region,  so  near  New  York,  could  not  es- 
cape legends  of  Captain  Kidd  and  his  treasure. 

Among  these  heights  on  the  western  side  of  the 
river  has  been  built,  for  miles,  a  bowlder-bordered 
road  of  smoothest  macadam.  It  is  the  Harriman 
Drive;  built  for  the  free  use  of  the  motoring  public. 
Beginning  a  little  south  of  West  Point,  it  sweeps  and 
curves  for  miles  among  heights  and  valleys  that  have 
hitherto  been  unknown  and  inaccessible ;  sweeping  up 
and  around  Bear  Mountain,  it  goes  superbly  on  its 
way,  amid  continuous  scenes  of  beauty  and  glory,  and 
always  loneliness,  and  leads  finally  to  Tuxedo. 

Amid  the  sternness  of  the  mountains  of  the  Hud- 

315 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 

son's  eastern  shore,  as  well  as  on  the  inland  West- 
chester roads  and  their  localities  just  beyond  these 
bordering  heights,  is  the  region  made  memorable  by 
Cooper  and  his  **Spy." 


316 


CHAPTER  XXV 


WEST  POINT 


T  is  natural  to  think  that  a  spot 
of  glorious  beauty  must  be 
connected  with  only  the  finest 
of  traditions.  And  this  makes 
West  Point,  notable  as  it  is 
among  the  world's  places  of 


beauty,  a  place  unusual,  for  its 
\  principal  association  is  with 


^  the  treachery  of  a  trusted  gen- 
eral. And  it  is  a  curious  fact, 
although  I  think  history  has 


never  given  it  consideration,  that  the  treachery  would 
have  been  successful  had  not  General  Benedict  Arnold 
formerly  been  a  resident  of  New  Haven. 

When  Andre  was  captured,  Lieutenant-Colonel 
Jameson  ordered  him  and  the  incriminating  papers 
to  be  sent  to  Arnold.  If  this  had  been  done  Arnold's 
treasonable  plans  would  have  been  carried  out.  But 
to  Major  Tallmadge,  next  in  command,  the  entire 
matter  had  a  different  aspect.  To  Jameson,  a  pass 
signed  by  his  immediate  superior  officer,  the  mighty 
General  Arnold,  and  papers  in  his  handwriting,  were 
sacred;  but  to  Major  Tallmadge,  the  important  fact 


317 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


was  that  Arnold,  like  himself,  was  a  man  of  New 
Haven.  He  knew  that  Benedict  Arnold,  as  a  mer- 
chant of  New  Haven,  was  the  son  of  a  bankrupt  and 
had  himself  afterwards  gone  through  a  suspicious 
bankruptcy;  and  so,  now,  when  traitorous-seeming 
papers  written  by  General  Arnold  were  found  on 
Andre,  he  deemed  at  once  that  Arnold  was  a  traitor. 
The  fact  that  Arnold  was  a  powerful  general  did  not 
weigh  a  particle.  Tallmadge  was  a  New  Haven  man, 
judging  in  regard  to  a  business  man  who  had  made  a 
bad  reputation  in  that  town,  and  he  protested  so 
strongly  to  Jameson  against  letting  Andre,  supposed 
to  be  a  man  called  Anderson  and  not  knowTi  to  be  a 
British  officer,  go  free,  that  Jameson  yielded;  al- 
though his  fear  of  General  Arnold  was  still  such  that 
he  sent  him  word  of  the  capture  of  Anderson, and 
this  warning  enabled  Arnold  to  escape  to  the  British 
lines. 

The  importance  of  West  Point  lay  in  its  command 
of  the  Hudson,  and  in  safeguarding  a  passage  be- 
tween the  New  England  Colonies  and  the  Colonies  to 
the  southward.  Had  the  British,  holding  New  York, 
also  been  able  to  control  the  Hudson,  the  two  halves  of 
the  American  Confederation  would  have  been  hope- 
lessly separated. 

Washington,  as  early  as  1783,  suggested  that  a  mil- 
itary academy  be  founded  at  West  Point.  Not,  how- 
ever, until  1802  was  a  law  passed  to  found  an  acad- 
emy there,  and  on  July  4th,  of  that  year,  it  was 
opened. 

Cadets  must  now  enter  between  the  ages  of  seven- 

318 


WEST  POINT 


teen  and  twenty-two,  they  must  be  unmarried  and  in 
perfect  health,  and  each  one  is  given  his  training  and 
tuition  free,  with  six  hundred  and  ten  dollars  a  year 
in  money.  Each  cadet  is  on  precisely  the  same  foot- 
ing as  every  other;  the  richest  cannot  buy  with  his 
money  any  pleasure  or  luxury  not  open  to  the  poorest. 

As  I  think  of  these  cadets,  trained  to  the  highest 
possible  military  perfection,  there  comes  a  memory 
of  a  parade  in  New  York  City  in  which  they  took  part ; 
a  woman  near  me,  noticing  their  superb  step  and  ap- 
pearance, but  only  half  catching  what  was  said  by  her 
neighbor  as  to  who  they  were,  and  taking  it  for  a  ref- 
erence to  a  well-kno\\ai  part  of  Long  Island  City  said, 
**Well,  them  Greenpoint  Cadets  certainly  do  march 
fine!'' 

When  Benedict  Arnold  came  here,  he  felt  actively 
disaffected  because  of  an  official  reprimand  in  regard 
to  some  matter  of  money.  He  disliked  Washington, 
and  thought  him  unfitted  to  win.  He  had  plunged 
inextricably  into  debt.  Before  he  was  given  the  com- 
mand of  West  Point  he  had  somehow  let  it  be  known 
that  he  was  ready  to  treat  with  the  English.  And 
General  Clinton  sent  Major  Andre  to  carry  negotia- 
tions to  a  conclusion. 

It  is  strange  that  Andre  has  been  so  intensely  and 
so  persistently  idolized.  He  entered,  without  hesita- 
tion, into  a  kind  of  conspiracy  from  which  a  man  of 
honor  would  have  shrunk.  It  was  not  merely  that  he 
became  a  spy.  Men  of  noble  ideals  have  risked  their 
lives  as  spies.  But  Andre  did  something  far  beyond 
this.    When  aiding  a  trusted  American  officer  to  be  a 

319 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


traitor,  he  did  it  under  the  safe-conduct  of  that  very 
officer.  But  the  white  flag,  as  Washington  calmly 
pointed  out,  was  never  intended,  by  military  stand- 
ards, to  cover  dealings  of  this  kind. 

Andre  was  personally  a  man  of  winning  personal- 
ity. He  danced  well.  He  was  a  gay  acquisition  for 
any  party  of  pleasure.  He  was  an  excellent  com- 
panion. In  Philadelphia  he  had  been  lionized  by 
society.  He  made  sketches  and  easily  wrote  a  sort 
of  verse.  And  so  a  great  many  people  were  shocked 
by  his  execution  rather  than  by  the  revelation  of  what 
he  was  perfectly  willing  to  descend  to. 

It  seems  strange  that  when  his  verses  on  *^The 
Cow  Chace''  are  referred  to,  it  is  only  to  point  out 
that  he  inadvertently  forecast  his  own  fate.  But  it  is 
also  well  to  know  that  in  those  verses  he  so  far  forgot 
what  was  due  to  an  enemy  officer  of  character  and 
honor,  as  to  imagine,  with  what  the  English  thought 
transcendent  cleverness.  General  Anthony  Wayne, 
than  whom  a  braver  man  never  lived,  telling  his  sol- 
diers to  do  the  fighting  while  he  in  safety  drove  in  the 
cows  and  versifically  adjuring  them  to  spare  no  ex- 
cess in  their  treatment  of  the  Tories'  wives  and 
daughters. 

A  few  words  will  tell  of  Arnold's  career  after  his 
treason  and  escape.  He  was  given,  as  had  been  prom- 
ised, a  sum  of  money  and  a  brigadier-generaPs  com- 
mission in  the  English  service:  then  instead  of  put- 
ting him  aside  and  letting  him  bear  his  commission  in 
disgraceful  solitude,  the  English  set  him  at  the  work, 
of  which  he  greedily  availed  himself,  of  burning  de- 

320 


WEST  POINT 


f enseless  Connecticut  towns ;  he  did  not  bum  quite  so 
many  as  General  Try  on  had  similarly  burned,  but  did 
very  well  for  a  man  without  previous  practice  in  that 
kind  of  warfare.  When  the  war  was  over  he  dropped 
out  of  sight,  joined  his  wife  in  England,  and  after  a 
while  quietly  died. 

Andre  was  sentenced  to  death  by  a  court-martial 
whose  members  were  so  wisely  selected  by  Washing- 
ton as  to  include  several  officers  from  the  armies  of 
Europe,  including  Lafayette  and  Steuben. 

Most  of  the  buildings  of  West  Point  Academy  are 
on  a  level  plateau,  almost  two  hundred  feet  above  the 
river.  The  greater  part  of  the  plateau  is  a  broad 
clear  grassy  space,  a  magnificent  parade  ground,  of- 
fering an  open  view  up  the  river,  with  the  buildings 
of  the  academy  fringing  the  plateau,  and  with  this 
bordering  space  dotted  with  elms  and  maples,  many 
of  them  of  great  size. 

At  the  edge  of  the  plateau  rises  a  monument,  a 
lofty  monolith  of  polished  granite  on  a  tiered  gran- 
ite base,  and  from  the  foot  of  this  monument  is  a 
wonderful  view  of  the  Hudson,  one  of  the  notable 
views  of  the  world. 

The  mountains  rise  on  either  side  of  the  great  broad 
shimmering  river.  Beyond,  in  the  distance,  in  softly 
swelling  beauty,  rises  height  over  height,  and  the 
river  bends  and  sweeps  gloriously.  There  is  not  only 
immense  beauty  in  the  view  but  an  immense  solem- 
nity, grandeur,  loneliness ;  all  is  water  and  rocks  and 
trees ;  it  is  as  if  it  were  an  uninhabited  region.  Yet, 
it  comes  to  mind  that  it  was  three  hundred  years  ago 

321 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


that  white  men  first  sailed  past  this  point;  and 
thoughts  come  of  those  days,  when  Albany,  far  above, 
was  founded,  and  for  a  time  was  looked  upon  as  more 
promising  as  a  future  city  than  New  York!  How 
far,  far  away  those  early  times,  those  early  ships  and 
men,  seem! — and  how  busy,  at  times,  has  this  very 
spot  been,  with  the  river  full  of  boats  and  regiment 
after  regiment  crossing  and  camping  here ! — and  now, 
what  loneliness  of  aspect !  As  I  look  off  at  the  miles 
and  miles  of  splendid  wilderness,  a  train,  seeming  like 
a  toy-train,  curves  distantly  into  view  and  tnen  slips 
quietly  out  of  sight  into  a  tunnel ;  a  f  ew  minutes  more 
and  a  steamer  rounds  a  distant  bend  and  comes  on 
prettily  down  the  mighty  stream. 

The  plateau  stands  rockily  and  precipitously  above 
the  water,  and  is  approached  from  the  landing-place 
at  the  river 's  edge  by  a  pleasant  up-leading  road,  past 
massive  buildings  set  with  much  of  medieval  effect 
against  the  rocky  plateau  site.  On  the  level  of  the 
plateau,  where  the  principal  buildings  stand,  most  of 
the  old-time  buildings  have  gradually  been  destroyed, 
within  the  past  quarter  century,  to  make  room  for 
new  structures. 

But  on  that  wonderful  plateau  one  does  not  much 
look  at  the  buildings;  one  looks  at  river  and  forest 
and  rocks — and  at  the  cadets  themselves,  who,  hun- 
dreds of  them,  come  marching  splendidly  out  upon 
the  parade.  But  the  World  War  has  taken  away 
most  of  the  cheerful  aspect  of  West  Point,  and  given 
it  a  grimness. 

In  every  direction  there  is  interest:  there  is  a 

322 


WEST  POINT 


Winged  Victory  by  MacMonnies,  an  admirable  and 
high-perched  Victory,  with  an  air;  a  flag  flies  from 
a  tall  white  flagstaff  topped  with  gold ;  the  clock-face 
on  a  square  stone  tower  shows  through  thick-massed 
branches;  cannon  balls,  relics  of  the  past,  are  piled 
like  the  cheeses  of  Alkmaar  Market,  and  there  is  an 
enormous  chain,  made  of  enormous  links,  which  was 
flung  across  the  Hudson  to  control  navigation  at  the 
time  of  the  Eevolution;  it  stands  curiously  for  the 
old-fashioned  methods  of  the  past — and  then  one 
suddenly  realizes  that  this  represents  the  most  up-to- 
date  kind  of  water  defense  of  even  the  present 
time. 

This  chain,  so  tradition  tells,  was  seventeen  hun- 
dred feet  long,  weighed  one  hundred  and  eighty-six 
tons  and  was  floated  down,  by  means  of  log-booms, 
from  New  Windsor,  and  was  here  fastened  to  rocks 
on  either  side  of  the  river.  There  was  also  another 
chain  flung  across  the  river  here,  which  was  ham- 
mered out,  link  by  link,  by  blacksmiths  of  the  coun- 
tryside, gathered,  at  the  request  of  the  military  au- 
thorities, at  Cold  Spring. 

There  is  a  monument  to  Washington,  an  excellent 
equestrian,  set  up  in  1915,  presented  by  a  modest 
donor  who  does  not  let  his  own  identity  appear  but 
who  simply  describes  himself  as  ^'a  patriotic  citizen" 
and  a  veteran  of  the  Civil  War.  There  is  a  monu- 
ment to  Kosciuszko,  the  Polish  soldier  who  came 
across  the  ocean  to  assist  the  American  cause,  and 
who  is  principally  remembered  by  the  lurid  declara- 
tion that    Freedom  shrieked  when  Kosciuszko  fell." 

323 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


(This  Polish  general  was  remembered  by  Brooklyn 
in  the  naming  of  a  street;  and  Brooklynites  love  to 
tell  that  a  young  policeman,  following  instructions  to 
enter  in  his  notebook  every  happening  or  discovery, 
began  to  write  that  he  had  found  a  dead  dog  at  the 
corner  of —  and  then,  looking  up  at  the  street-sign  and 
seeing  that  it  was  Kosciuszko,  took  the  dog  by  the  tail 
and  dragged  it  down  one  block  to  a  street  with  an 
easier  name.) 

Memorial  Hall,  Grecian  in  style,  with  Ionic  details, 
is  a  striking  building,  built  at  the  very  edge  of  the 
plateau,  with  its  outer  half  supported  by  stone  abut- 
ments; it  is  an  unusually  beautiful  building,  nobly 
perched,  with  a  superb  water-view  terrace  along  its 
outer  side. 

The  library  is  of  Tudoresque  appearance,  with  dia- 
mond-paned  windows  and  Gothic  halls,  with  not  only 
books,  but  a  notable  display  of  portraits  of  Americans 
of  early  time  in  a  high-ceilinged  notable  room.  There 
is  a  Washington  by  Gilbert  Stuart,  and  there  is  also 
a  copy  of  Stuart's  General  Knox,  the  original  being 
in  Boston;  and  this  copy,  oddly  enough,  considering 
that  it  was  made  for  a  military  school  and  is  a  por- 
trait of  the  great  artillery  officer  of  the  Revolution, 
omits  the  cannon  on  which  Knox's  hand,  in  the  orig- 
inal, is  resting. 

There  is  an  exceptionally  good  portrait  of  Thomas 
Jefferson,  a  full-length  by  that  notable  Philadelphia 
artist,  Sully,  whose  forte  was  more  the  painting  of 
beautiful  women  than  of  men,  but  who  with  this  pic- 

324 


WEST  POINT 


ture  of  Jefferson  achieved  a  triumph.  But  the  J eff er- 
son  who  was  an  exponent  of  simplicity  and  who  was 
in  the  habit  of  publicly  carrying  simplicity  to  an  os- 
tentatious extreme,  is  not  here ;  it  is  a  different  Jeffer- 
son, the  Jefferson  of  the  aristocratic  and  distinguished 
Monticello,  a  Jefferson  in  formal  court  dress;  and, 
yet,  after  all,  it  is  a  very  simple  court  dress  indeed, 
with  black  silk  stockings,  black  satin  breeches,  and  a 
long  coat  worn  with  a  grand  air;  in  all,  a  long  slim 
portrait  of  the  long  slim  statesman. 

The  old  quarters  of  the  officers  are  lined  along  the 
back  edge  of  the  parade  ground,  nestling  at  the  foot 
of  higher  hills.  They  are  low-set,  broad-hall-in-the- 
middle  old  homes,  big  chimneyed,  and  attractive  with 
old  shrubs,  sweet  gardens,  and  places  to  sit  in  the 
shade. 

High  perched,  part  way  up  a  height  behind  the 
plateau,  and  surrounded  by  heavy  masses  of  trees,  is 
a  great  long  impressive  building,  square  towered  and 
splendidly  effective,  which  gives  a  marked  impression 
of  being,  in  shape  and  setting,  like  the  ancient  Cathe- 
dral of  Durham — with  the  important  difference  that 
this  building  is  very  new.  It  is  the  chapel  of  the 
Academy,  and  inside,  as  with  some  of  the  English 
cathedrals,  it  is  lined  with  flags  projectively  and  pro- 
cessionally  hanging,  very,  very  still  in  the  still  air  of 
the  great  long  interior;  it  is  extremely  impressive, 
this  use  of  the  flags  on  their  staffs,  in  this  old-world 
style. 

Still  higher  up,  mounting  the  hill  that  rises  behind 

325 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


the  plateau,  is  old  Fort  Putnam,  five  hundred  feet 
above  the  river,  built  in  the  time  of  the  Eevolution^ 
afterwards  dismantled  and  fallen  to  ruin,  now  re- 
stored, with  old  moss-grown  casements  beneath  the 
newer  superstructure. 

The  view  from  this  height  is  amazing  in  its  sweep, 
and  in  its  impression  of  profound  loneliness. 
Abruptly  towering  heights  rise  on  the  farther  side  of 
the  valley  behind.  Nowhere,  looking  inland,  away 
from  the  river,  is  even  a  single  house  or  a  single 
clearing  to  be  seen.  All  is  unbroken  forest  on  ap- 
parently impassable  heights.  Whatever  may  really 
be  there — and  there  is  very,  very  little — is  hidden 
from  view  by  the  thick-massed  miles  and  miles  of 
trees. 

And  here  within  old  Fort  Putnam  I  came  upon  an- 
cient Pan !  He  was  a  lad,  scarcely  more  than  a  boy, 
lying  at  full  length  on  the  grass,  surrounded  by  three 
or  four  nibbling  sheep  and  tootling  a  tune  on  a  flage- 
olet. Looking  straight  up  into  the  sunny  sky,  with 
his  flageolet — his  Pan's  pipe! — pointed  directly  to- 
ward the  zenith,  he  was  playing  a  simple  shepherd- 
like air. 

I  did  not  speak  to  him,  I  did  not  ask  him  where 
he  could  possibly  have  come  from,  with  his  handful 
of  sheep,  from  among  those  miles  of  apparently  un- 
broken solitude;  it  was  almost  uncanny,  and  it  was 
certainly  too  picturesque  to  spoil.  I  preferred  to 
have  it  remain  a  mystery.  He  did  not  see  me.  He 
and  his  sheep  were  as  unconscious  of  my  presence  as 
were  the  ghostly  Dutchmen  of  the  presence  of  Rip 

326 


WEST  POINT 


Van  Winkle,  and  I  left  him  there,  with  the  sheep  still 
nibbling  quietly  about  him,  and  with  the  simple  tune 
still  sounding  pleasantly,  and  with  his  eyes  still  look- 
ing up  into  the  distant  sky. 


327 


CHAPTER  XXVI 


DOWN  THE  BAY 


LL  roads  lead  to  New  York  I 
Everybody  comes  here  or  at 
least  wishes  to  come  here,  not 
only  from  all  parts  of  Amer- 
ica, but  from  the  most  distant 
points  of  the  earth.  Some 
come  here  without  even  having 
planned  it,  as  was  the  case 
w^ith    Henry    Hudson,  who 


found  himself  most  unexpectedly  in  New  York  har- 
bor, although  under  definite  orders  from  his  employ- 
ers, their  High  Mightinesses,  who  seem  to  have  real- 
ized the  lure  of  Broadway  even  though  it  was  then 
non-existent,  not  to  deviate  from  his  course  toward 
a  Northwest  Passage.  Verazzano,  preceding  Hud- 
son, was  much  the  same,  for,  as  Mark  Twain  wrote 
about  Columbus,  he  certainly  did  not  know  where  he 
was  coming  and  had  never  been  here  before. 

Cornwallis  tried  determinedly  to  come  here,  and  to 
bring  his  army  with  him,  but  he  was  unexpectedly 
detained  in  Virginia.  General  Burgoyne  wanted  to 
come;  and  only  the  stress  of  circumstances  too  pow- 
erful to  be  resisted  kept  him  away ;  which  is  remind- 


328 


DOWN  THE  BAY 

ful  that  so  great  and  so  clever  a  man  as  Bernard 
Shaw,  in  his  play,  **The  DeviPs  Disciple,''  which  he 
wrote  on  America,  set  down,  in  all  seriousness,  that 
Burgoyne  marched  his  army  from  Boston  to  Sara- 
toga ! — the  kind  of  mistake  which  no  American  would 
be  pardoned  for  making  in  regard  to  any  important 
campaign  in  European  history.  But  the  English 
never  will  learn  the  geography  of  America!  Dick- 
ens wrote,  in  a  very  serious  part  of  his  very  serious 
attack  on  this  country,  that  he  one  day  crossed  over 
from  New  York  to  visit  an  asylum  on  an  island, 
whether  Ehode  Island  or  Long  Island  he  had  quite 
forgotten — and  of  course,  English-like,  he  would  not 
take  the  moment's  necessary  time  to  look  it  up  in  a 
gazetteer. 

But,  though  Dickens  frankly  did  not  care  for 
America,  but  only  for  American  dollars,  he  himself 
was  another  of  the  many  who  came  here.  Sir  Wal- 
ter Scott  had  a  strong  fancy  to  cross  the  ocean,  and 
almost  achieved  his  wish,  for  in  a  trip  to  the  Hebrides, 
during  the  War  of  1812,  he  saw  on  the  horizon  an 
American  privateer,  and  imagined  his  feelings  should 
it  capture  his  boat  and  carry  him  to  New  York ! 

Prince  William  Henry,  forty-nine  years  later  to 
become  King  William  the  Fourth,  came  to  New  York 
to  help  the  English  cause,  in  1781,  but  found  the  cause 
to  be  in  rather  a  bad  way.  Freneau,  the  old-time 
American  poet  who  wrote  of  the  Revolution,  versified 
the  future  King  in  a  poem  which  described  how  the 
young  man  looked  about  in  disappointment  at  the 
cramped  extent  of  the  English  dominion,  and  said: 

329 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


Where  all  your  vast  domain  can  be, 
Friends,  for  my  soul,  I  cannot  see ; 
'Tis  but  an  empty  name  : 
Three  wasted  islands  and  a  town 
In  rubbish  buried — ^half  burnt  down, 
Is  all  that  we  can  claim." 

William  was  treated  with  great  deference,  on  ac- 
count of  his  relationship  to  royalty,  although  it  could 
hardly  have  been  thought  possible,  at  that  time,  that 
he  should  ever  become  King.  He  was  dined  and 
welcomed  by  the  officers  in  high  command,  and  it  is 
still  remembered  that  one  of  the  houses  where  he 
was  entertained  at  dinner  was  the  old  Kreuzer  house 
at  West  New  Brighton  on  Staten  Island,  one  of  the 
buildings,  built  before  the  year  1800,  which  are  still 
standing  in  this  city.  There  are  some  fifty,  includ- 
ing churches  and  homes,  within  the  entire  immense 
area  of  all  Greater  New  York. 

On  the  whole  the  most  interesting  of  the  visitors 
to  New  York,  but  this  perhaps  from  the  romantic 
unexpectedness  of  it,  was  Lord  Nelson,  the  great  Nel- 
son of  Trafalgar.  He  had  not,  at  the  time  of  his 
visit,  fought  his  great  victories,  for  this  was  far  back 
in  1782,  but  to  find  him  here,  in  command  of  battle- 
ships, during  our  Eevolutionary  War,  is  fascinating. 
He  was  only  twenty-four  years  old  at  the  time,  and 
had  recently  been  in  the  Bay  of  Boston,  and  there 
was  pursued  and  almost  captured  by  the  French,  as 
I  remember  reading  in  one  of  his  letters.  Thence  he 
went  to  Quebec,  and  there  received  orders  to  sail,  in 
command  of  a  squadron,  for  New  York — and,  so  he 

330 


DOWN  THE  BAY 


wrote,  it  was  so  cold  that  the  sails  were  frozen  to  the 
yards.  He  spent  several  days  here,  and  even  after 
the  departure  of  most  of  his  squadron  for  the  West 
Indies,  remained  for  a  day  or  two  more. 

Always  the  lure  of  New  York,  one  sees,  and  always 
the  desire  to  stay  here!  Old  Petrus  Stuyvesant  de- 
terminedly came  back  here  to  end  his  days,  even 
though  he  had  been  deposed  from  the  governorship 
and  the  Dutch  no  longer  ruled.  Governor  Dongan 
remained  here  after  his  term  was  over,  and  would 
fain  have  stayed  longer  had  he  not  felt  it  necessary 
to  flee  back  to  England  during  the  Leisler  troubles; 
he  being  that  Roman  Catholic  governor  of  the  late 
Stuart  regime,  whose  name  is  still  kept  in  mind  by 
the  names  of  Dongan  Hills  and  Castleton,  marking 
his  oncewhile  estate  on  Staten  Island,  and  kept  in 
mind,  too,  by  a  tablet  on  the  front  of  old  St.  Peter's 
on  Barclay  Street,  just  at  the  edge  of  the  Elevated, 
a  very  broad  church,  fronted  with  stately  pillars, 
dating  from  1838,  but  standing  on  the  site  of  the 
earliest  Catholic  church  in  the  city,  which  was  built 
in  1786. 

Citizen  Genet,  the  French  Minister  to  America  who 
was  ordered  to  return  to  France  on  account  of  his 
insolence  and  arrogance,  and  who  is  generally  sup- 
posed to  have  returned  as  ordered,  was  another  who 
so  loved  New  York  that  he  did  not  wish  to  leave; 
and  so  he  stayed  here  even  though  he  dared  not  live 
on  Manhattan  Island,  but  retired  to  a  farm,  which 
had  been  given  to  him  by  DeWitt  Clinton,  whose 
daughter  he  had  married,  across  the  East  River,  in 

331 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


what  was  in  time  to  become  part  of  New  York  City. 

Benjamin  Franklin  was  at  one  time  a  sufferer  from 
the  attractions  of  New  York.  For  he  was  here  in 
1757,  with  his  passage  engaged  for  England  on  board 
of  a  ship  that  was  to  sail  under  convoy  of  the  fleet 
of  the  Earl  of  Loudon.  In  daily  expectation  of  sail- 
ing, Franklin  and  the  other  passengers  remained 
almost  constantly  on  board  for  more  than  six  weeks, 
and  not  until  that  long  period  had  elapsed,  with  Lou- 
don daily  expected  to  sail  but  daily  finding  cause  to 
remain,  did  the  Earl  at  length  summon  resolution  to 
tear  himself  away  and  let  the  fleet  sail. 

Among  the  millions  who  have  come  to  New  York 
only  a  few  can  be  mentioned.  Long  ago  came  here 
that  Louis  Philippe  who  was  afterwards,  unexpect- 
edly, to  be  King  of  France,  and  there  also  came  here 
Joseph  Bonaparte,  who  had  been  King  of  Naples  and 
then  of  Spain,  but  to  whom  America  looked  very 
attractive.  The  great  Napoleon  himself,  after  Wa- 
terloo, planned  to  come  here,  and  what  a  figure  he 
would  have  made!  What  strange  things  he  might 
have  achieved!  It  was  not  his  fault  that  he  did 
not  come  sailing  into  New  York  Bay. 

The  waterside  of  lower  New  York  is  crowded  with 
memories.  Here  Washington  landed  on  July  25th, 
1775,  about  where  Laight  Street  now  leaves  West,  on 
his  way  to  Massachusetts  to  assume  command  of  the 
American  army  that  had  gathered  for  the  siege  of 
Boston  after  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill. 

Near  Washington's  landing-place,  it  was  later 
planned  to  land  and  kidnap  General  Clinton,  when 

332 


DOWN  THE  BAY 


he  was  in  command  of  the  British  in  New  York,  and 
the  plan  fell  through  only  because  of  the  strenuous 
protests  of  Alexander  Hamilton,  who  urged  that 
General  Clinton  was  so  incompetent  as  to  do  no 
harm,  but  that  a  general  sent  in  his  place  might  be 
one  of  ability ! 

A  little  nearer  the  Battery,  a  landing  was  to  be 
made  to  capture  Clinton's  protege,  Benedict  Arnold, 
who  was  living  with  the  British  down  on  lower 
Broadway,  after  his  treason:  the  plan  was  worked 
out  by  a  soldier  who  went  to  the  British  as  a  pre- 
tended deserter,  and  it  was  frustrated  only  by  Ar- 
nold's unexpected  departure  on  the  first  of  his  house- 
burning  trips. 

And  near  this  spot,  almost  precisely  a  century  aft- 
erward, there  landed  a  certain  Robert  Louis  Steven- 
son who,  after  crossing  the  ocean  in  the  steerage, 
went  to  a  sailor's  tavern  on  West  Street  in  an  open 
wagon,  in  a  drenching  rain,  and  found  a  place  where, 
to  wash  himself,  it  was  necessary  to  go  out  into  an 
open  courtyard  to  a  tin  basin  and  slippery  soap — 
and  then  he  wrote  about  it  and  put  it  in  his  book, 
**The  Amateur  Emigrant,"  in  a  way  to  give  the  im- 
pression that  this  was  quite  a  usual  manner  of  re- 
ceiving foreigners  in  New  York,  and  the  kind  of  ac- 
commodation they  were  likely  to  be  given;  and  he 
also  wrote  of  his  amazement  that  he  was  not  well  re- 
ceived by  publishers  and  others,  when  he  went  and 
stood  in  their  offices  (the  smell  of  the  steerage  still, 
as  he  says,  being  on  him),  with  water  literally  drip- 
ping from  him  in  a  circle  on  their  floors. 

333 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 

Should  you  sail  out,  yourself,  from  this  shore,  and 
should  your  vessel  steer  for  the  Narrows,  you  may 
be  going  toward  either  Europe  or  Coney  Island,  such 
being  among  the  cheerful  possibilities  of  life  open  to 
every  one  and  constantly;  only  this  time,  let  us  sup- 
pose you  are  going  just  to  Coney  Island  and  that  you 
are  looking  at  places  on  the  way.  In  a  few  min- 
utes you  are  abreast  of  the  Statue  of  Liberty,  ped- 
estaled on  a  little  island;  a  Liberty  not  chic,  rather 
dowdy  in  fact,  and  yet  undoubtedly  French,  for  she 
was  sent  over  to  the  United  States  as  a  gift  to  this 
nation,  by  France,  in  1883.  It  used  to  be  that  West- 
erners were  told  by  their  newspapers  that  the 
statue  lighted  the  harbor  with  a  great  glow,  whereas 
its  light  was  really  very  insignificant;  but  it  is  now 
lighted  with  diffused  light  thrown  upon  it  from  be- 
low. 

A  few  years  ago,  visitors  landing  on  the  little  island 
were  apt  to  find  themselves  caught  in  little  flurries 
of  ashes,  for  it  was  for  a  time  quite  the  thing,  among 
widows  and  widowers  with  cremated  partners,  to 
mount  to  the  top  of  Liberty  and  toss  the  ashes  to  the 
four  winds. 

Near  the  tiny  islet  that  holds  Liberty,  is  little  Ellis 
Island,  where  incoming  immigrants  are  examined  as 
to  health  and  means  and  prospects.  The  American, 
returning  home  from  abroad,  has  glanced  with  inter- 
est on  the  gay  and  talkative  throng  of  steerage  folk, 
and  as  New  York  is  neared  he  notices  a  silence  fall, 
and  sees  the  bright-clad  foreigners  line  the  forward 
end  of  the  ship,  looking,  looking,  as  if  striving  to 

334 


DOWN  THE  BAY 


see  what  it  is  that  the  great  city  holds  in  store  for 
them;  and  now  and  then,  as  they  see  towers  and 
buildings  and  bridges,  an  eager  hum  arises,  and 
sweeps  over  them,  and  then  sinks  into  silence;  and 
after  he  has  landed,  the  immigrants  are  taken  back 
to  meet  the  tests  of  entrance  to  this,  their  Promised 
Land. 

At  your  right,  as  you  approach  the  Narrows,  is 
Staten  Island.  Over  on  its  eastern  side,  but  out  of 
sight  from  the  boat,  are  the  columned  buildings  of 
that  Sailors'  Snug  Harbor,  for  old  American  sailors 
who  should  make  their  life  anchorage  here. 

Over  the  low-rolling  hills,  passing  where  once  were 
great  estates  and  where  still  stand  scatteringly  a  few 
old  houses  and  taverns  and  tide-mills,  and  churches 
that  perhaps  have  silver  that  was  given  them  by 
Queen  Anne,  is  Tottenville,  where  there  still  stands 
the  Billopp  house,  a  century  older  than  the  Revolu- 
tion, built  of  rubble  stone,  with  a  line  of  square  two- 
story  pillars  along  its  front.  Here,  in  September  of 
1776,  General  Howe,  then  in  command  at  New  York, 
received  Benjamin  Franklin,  John  Adams  and  Ed- 
ward Rutledge,  who  at  his  request  had  been  sent  to 
him  by  Congress  to  talk  of  possible  peace. 

It  developed  that  Howe  could  talk  only  of  the  par- 
don of  such  as  should  lay  down  their  arms  and  re- 
turn to  kingly  allegiance,  and  as  this  was  not  the 
idea  of  the  delegates  they  returned  to  their  boat, 
Howe  accompanying  them  and  expressing  his  feeling 
that  their  stand  was  painful  both  to  him  and  to 
themselves;  to  which  Franklin,  always  delightfully 

335 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


ready  with  good  American  replies,  said  that  *'The 
people  would  endeavor  to  take  good  care  of  them- 
selves, and  thus  alleviate  as  much  as  possible  the 
pain  his  lordship  might  feel  in  consequence  of  any 
severity  his  lordship  might  deem  it  his  duty  to 
adopt.''  Embarrassed  by  this,  Howe  expressed  to 
Adams  his  regret  that  he  could  not  recognize  the 
committee  in  a  public  character,  whereupon  Adams 
promptly  replied  that  he  was  willing  for  a  few  mo- 
ments to  be  regarded  in  any  character  except  that  of 
a  British  subject. 

Before  going  on,  and  entering  the  Narrows,  you 
will  pass  the  spot  where,  a  century  before  submar- 
ines came  into  use,  an  American  inventor  showed 
their  possibility. 

The  inventor  was  the  versatile  Eobert  Fulton, 
who  after  going  to  England  and  living  for  a  time  as 
an  art  student  under  that  American,  Benjamin  West, 
whom  the  English  made  president  of  the  Royal  Acad- 
emy to  succeed  Joshua  Reynolds,  turned  his  mind 
to  things  mechanical  instead  of  things  artistic,  and 
invented  what  he  himself  termed  a  *  *  submarine  boat ' ' 
or  plunging  boat.''  His  experiments  convinced 
him  that  with  a  submarine  and  torpedoes  he  could 
sink  ships.  Full  of  the  idea  and  its  possibilities,  he 
hurried  over  to  France,  and  blew  up  in  the  harbor 
of  Brest  a  boat  obtained  for  experimentation.  Fail- 
ing to  interest  the  French,  he  returned  to  England 
and  in  an  English  harbor  showed  that,  with  his  sub- 
marine and  torpedoes,  he  could  sink  ships.  Again 
there  was  no  encouragement,  whereupon  he  came  to 

336 


DOWN  THE  BAY 


his  native  America  and  in  1807,  in  the  harbor  of  New 
York,  successfully  torpedoed  an  old  hulk.  But  again 
nothing  came  of  it  all. 

In  the  War  of  1812,  the  English  thought  of  Fulton 
with  dread.  They  remembered  his  submarine,  and 
the  memory  gave  them  immense  concern.  Although 
he  made  no  actual  attempt  against  the  British,  while 
they  had  ships  in  the  vicinity  of  New  York,  it  was 
afterwards  learned  that  his  mere  presence,  with  the 
dread  that  it  inspired,  materially  checked  and  ham- 
pered the  plans  of  the  British  commander.  In  an 
attempt  to  capture  Fulton,  British  soldiers  landed 
one  night  and  surrounded  a  house  where  they  ex- 
pected to  find  him  visiting,  but  he  was  not  there. 

Still,  America  would  not  adopt  his  under-water  in- 
vention, and,  disappointed,  Fulton  turned  his  mind 
exclusively  to  steamboats,  after  formally  writing  it 
down  as  his  belief  that,  in  time,  submarines  would 
revolutionize  aU  warfare. 

On  Staten  Island,  and  where  he  could  look  out 
upon  the  Narrows,  through  which  passes  the  shipping 
of  the  world,  lived  for  a  time,  as  a  tutor,  Thoreau  of 
Concord,  exponent  of  what  is  now  termed  the  simple 
life  and  the  nature  schooP';  he  was  a  home-loving 
writer,  who  could  at  any  time  pick  up  material  for  a 
couple  of  hundred  pages  within  a  walk  of  a  couple 
of  miles,  and  to  go  as  far  as  New  York  was  for 
him  a  notable  event. 

As  we  enter  the  Narrows  there  are  to  be  seen  two 
old-fashioned  and  pictorial  forts;  for  a  fort  with 
any  appearance  of  age  is  always  somewhat  pictorial ; 

337 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


and  in  the  Narrows,  although  not  from  one  of  the 
forts,  was  fired  the  last  shot  of  the  Revolutionary- 
War. 

For  the  British,  sailing  sulkily  away  from  the  city 
they  had  so  long  held,  and  angered  by  the  signs  of 
joy  on  the  part  of  the  populace,  nailed  the  British 
flag  to  the  top  of  the  Battery  flagpole  and  greased  the 
pole  below  it  so  that  it  could  not  be  climbed;  and  their 
chagrin  was  intense,  when,  from  their  departing  ves- 
sels, they  saw  a  ready-witted  young  American,  John 
Van  Arsdale,  swiftly  mount  the  pole  by  nailing  cleats 
in  front  of  him,  and  then  remove  the  British  flag, 
which  in  a  little  while  was  replaced  by  the  American. 
The  British  were  so  chagrined  that,  when  their  ships 
were  in  the  Narrows,  and  the  derisive  crowds  on 
Staten  Island  were  so  close  as  plainly  to  be  both 
seen  and  heard,  a  cannon  was  fired  into  the  mass. 
But,  fortunately,  it  did  not  hurt  any  one,  and  merely 
showed  the  English  to  be  bad  losers. 

As  to  Van  Arsdale,  the  honor  was  given,  to  him- 
self and  his  descendants  forever,  of  raising  the 
American  flag  on  the  Battery  on  each  anniversary  of 
Evacuation  Day ;  and  the  fine  privilege  has  year  after 
year  been  exercised. 

On  Staten  Island,  not  far  from  Richmond,  and  on 
a  little  height,  is  still  to  be  seen  an  old-time,  star- 
shaped,  earthwork  fort,  Fort  Izzard,  covered  with 
grass  and  overrun  with  mid  strawberries;  a  peace- 
ful spot,  but  meant  for  serious  work  when  it  was  put 
up  by  the  British  as  part  of  their  system  of  New 
York  defense. 

338 


DOWN  THE  BAY 


On  the  island  there  lived,  for  a  time,  the  Italian 
patriot  Garibaldi,  who  fled  to  America  after  a  defeat 
in  Italy  and  lived  here  for  a  time  engaged  in  making 
soap  and  candles :  the  house  he  lived  in  is  preserved. 

Emerging  from  the  Narrows  the  boat  enters  the 
Lower  Bay.  And  over  there  on  the  right,  on  the 
Staten  Island  shore,  is  New  Dorp,  a  place  of  early 
Moravian  settlement  and  still  a  Moravian  town.  Its 
earliest  church,  built  in  1763,  still  stands,  although 
no  longer  used  as  a  church. 

It  is  always  delightful  to  find  an  old  custom  pre- 
served in  America,  and  the  Moravians  have  one  of 
the  prettiest  of  old  customs;  their  sunrise  service  of 
Easter  morning.  The  people  gather  in  their  church, 
decked  as  it  is  with  Easter  flowers,  before  darkness 
has  vanished ;  and  a  service  begins ;  and  as  the  first 
faint  light  of  coming  dawn  touches  the  church  win- 
dows, the  congregation,  with  choir  and  musicians,  and 
led  by  the  pastor,  walk  out,  into  the  ancient  grave- 
yard, and  there,  in  the  cool,  sweet  mystery  of  earliest 
morning,  before  the  sun  has  risen  but  when  actual 
darkness  has  gone,  the  service  is  sweetly  concluded; 
and  then  the  sun,  as  if  waiting  for  a  signal,  glowingly 
emerges  from  the  farthest  edge  of  the  bay. 

At  length  your  boat  approaches  Coney  Island, 
there  at  the  left  on  the  southern  shore  of  Long  Island. 
Your  preliminary  impression  is  of  low-lying  huddled 
structures  of  frame,  with  gaudy  towers  and  peaks 
and  pinnacles  and  gaudy  roofs,  in  greens  and  reds 
and  whites  and  browns  and  grays,  with  here  and 
there  some  strange  spidery  skeleton  structure  stand- 

339 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


ing  up,  or  some  great  monstrous  slow-turning  wheel, 
bearing  baskets  black  with  dots  that  you  know  must 
be  people.  The  great  beach  is  thronged  with  people ; 
in  the  water  and  on  the  sand  it  is  people,  people, 
everywhere ;  indeed  the  principal  and  constant  inter- 
est of  Coney  is  that  of  the  innumerable  people  that  it 
gathers. 

Coney  Island  has  much  that  is  admirable.  The 
first  thought  is  to  condemn  it,  for  its  noise,  its  com- 
monness, its  cheapness,  its  garishness,  but  the  in- 
stant that  it  is  realized  that  it  is  the  ocean  play- 
ground of  the  public,  the  only  one  open  to  the  general 
public,  the  feeling  changes.  And  that  New  York  has 
so  freely  bought  an  immense  stretch  of  beach  from 
private  ownership  and  devoted  it  to  the  free  use  of 
the  public  is  but  one  of  many  admirable  features. 

The  bathing  suits  and  caps  are  in  gaudy  colorings 
innumerable.  Everywhere  are  life  and  movement 
and  gayety,  everywhere  distracting  noise,  every- 
where clamor,  everywhere  the  clash  and  clang  and 
whine  and  bang  of  music,  everywhere  the  endless  res- 
taurants, everywhere  the  cry  of  pullers-in,  every- 
where dancing  and  talk  and  laughter  and  drums  and 
bands  and  orchestras.  Mechanical  horses  race  for- 
ever over  long  tracks  of  steel,  boats  rush  down  for- 
ever from  impossible  heights,  packed  with  people 
who  forever  go  shrieking  down  into  the  water. 
Everywhere  are  throngs,  on  the  sidewalks,  in  the 
streets,  in  the  mighty  shows,  on  the  beaches,  or  jump- 
ing up  and  down  in  endless  lines  in  the  surf. 

It  is  blissful  happiness ;  crass  happiness  if  you  will, 

340 


DOWN  THE  BAY 


but  very  human  happiness :  it  is  life,  variety,  motion, 
endless  amusement  in  endless  variety,  and  all  stand- 
ing for  happiness.  Of  course  there  is  also  wicked- 
ness, both  tucked  away  and  brazen;  but  on  the  other 
hand,  I  have  never  observed  that  riches  either  ex- 
clude wickedness  or  have  any  monopoly  of  virtue; 
and  people  of  perhaps  ordinary  tastes  who  earn  by 
toil  the  money  to  pay  for  a  few  hours  of  diversion, 
may  have  among  them  quite  as  small  a  proportion  of 
wickedness  as  the  wealthy  folk,  at  wealthy  watering 
places,  who  recklessly  spend  great  sums  which  most 
likely  they  have  not  even  had  any  part  in  earning. 

Size,  at  Coney,  means  much.  There  are  dancing 
places  of  immense  area;  there  are  restaurants  of  in- 
finite capacity;  there  are  private  shows,  which  them- 
selves contain  immense  variety  in  amusement  and 
which  represent  the  investment  of  millions  of  dollars 
of  capital — and  incidentally  a  high  order  of  brains. 
The  mighty  beach,  the  great  sea  stretching  off  inimit- 
ably— all  is  vastness. 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  quiet  restfulness  to  be 
gained  at  Coney,  by  tired  folk  who  come  here  to 
breathe  the  breezes  sweeping  straight  in  from  the 
ocean,  to  bask  on  the  sand  in  the  sun,  to  soak  in  health 
from  the  sea;  but  the  greatest  part  of  the  enjoyment 
is  taken  noisily,  feverishly,  and  in  any  case  always 
happily. 

Far  different  is  this  mad,  gyrating,  garish,  danc- 
ing, noisy  common  Coney  from  the  ordered  gayety  of 
such  a  place  as  the  famous  Brighton  in  England, 
with  its  air  of  permanence,  its  primly  discreet  bath- 

341 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


ing  wagons.  Different,  too,  is  Coney  from  the  quaint 
semi-freedom  of  Scheveningen,  the  pictorial  ocean- 
side  gathering  place  of  Holland.  Coney,  indeed,  is 
in  a  class  by  itself.  In  externals,  it  is  somewhat  like 
Blackpool,  a  resort  for  the  working  folk  of  Liverpool 
and  Manchester,  but  Blackpool  is  coarser,  ruder, 
without  the  likableness  of  Coney  and  without  the 
splendor  of  expense  and  variety  and  numbers.  The 
editor  of  a  Blackpool  newspaper  said  to  me  that  a 
young  woman  from  New  York  came  there,  with  a 
friend  of  his,  and  that  he  showed  her  all  the  sights. 

took  her  to  pavilions  and  roller-coasters  and  res- 
taurants and  shows,  and  I  was  sure  she  was  im- 
pressed, and  she  thanked  me  very  prettily,  when  the 
day  was  over  and  she  said,''  thus  the  editor  con- 
cluded with  a  rueful  smile :  "  '  Now,  when  you  come 
to  New  York,  you  must  let  me  take  you  to  Coney 
Island,  and  I  shall  show  you  everything  you  have 
here — and  a  great  deal  more ! '  " 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

IN  GEEENWICH  VILLAGE 


'HERE  two   or  three 

artists  are  gathered 
together,  there  shall  be 
a  Bohemia  in  the  midst 
of  them;  or  at  least 
they  shall  be  in  the 
midst  of  a  Bohemia. 
And  as  there  are  more 
than  twenty-five  thou- 
sand who  are  listed  as 
artists  in  New  York 
City,  including  paint- 
ers, sculptors  and 
architects,  industrial  art  designers  and  commercial 
draftsmen,  it  naturally  follows  that  New  York  has  a 
Bohemia.  In  fact,  the  city  has  a  number  of  Bo- 
hemias, for  it  has  quite  a  number  of  studio  centers; 
and  some  of  the  groups  represent  such  prosperity 
that  Bohemia  is  lost  and  one  gets  barely  a  glimpse 
of  its  Coast:  for  to  make  the  really  fascinating  Bo- 
hemia custom  demands  that  there  be  an  atmosphere 
of  hard  work  and  hard  times,  or  at  least  a  pseudo- 
atmosphere. 

And  so,  from  this,  Bohemia  has  come  to  be  repre- 

343 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 

sented  by  Greenwich  Village  and  the  vicinity  of 
Washington  Square — for  these  adjoining  districts 
freely  offer  the  outward  and  visible  signs  expected 
of  a  Bohemia.  There  is  not  too  much  of  uninterest- 
ing prosperity.  Art  students  come  here.  Begin- 
ners, striving  for  a  foothold  in  art,  gravitate  here. 
Cubists  and  Futurists  find  lodgment.  There  are 
also  artists.  The  public  come  here  to  catch  sight  of 
artists  and  students — and  the  artists  and  the  students 
are  not  loth  to  be  seen !  It  has  even  been  suggested 
that  among  the  real  artists  and  the  real  students  in 
Greenwich  Village  are  some  who  are  but  pretenders ; 
some  who  enjoy  being  classed  as  artists  and  living 
among  artists.  To  say  casually,  *^My  studio,''  does 
not  necessarily  mean  that  it  is  really  used  for  pic- 
ture-making; it  may  be  merely  a  place  for  a  pic- 
turesque and  picaresque  sort  of  life,  very  enjoyable  to 
the  domestically  unattached. 

There  is  an  important  studio  center  gathered  in 
the  general  vicinity  of  Gramercy  Park;  there  is  an- 
other important  studio  center  clustered  on  and  about 
West  55th,  56th  and  57th  Streets;  another  center  is 
some  ten  blocks  to  the  north  of  this,  another  has 
gathered  on  East  67th  and  66th  Streets,  and  Chelsea 
also  has  a  studio  center;  but  most  in  evidence  and 
by  far  the  most  in  the  public  eye  and  mind  are  the 
studios  and  little  art  shops  and  little  restaurants  of 
the  region  of  Washington  Square  and  Greenwich. 
And,  too,  quite  a  number  of  writers  have  gathered  in 
this  Bohemia,  and  are  as  much  Bohemians  of  the 
Bohemians  as  are  the  picture-making  ones. 

344 


IN  GREENWICH  VILLAGE 


Bohemia,  in  this  city  of  change,  must  needs  change 
like  everything  else.  It  used  to  hover,  so  recently  as 
"Whitman  and  the  early  days  of  Howells,  at 
**Pfaff%''  on  Broadway;  but  it  shifted  away  from 
there,  just  as  it  had  shifted  there  from  nearer  City 
Hall  Park,  and  after  a  while  it  shifted  to  Greenwich 
Village,  where  there  were  still  to  be  found  old  dormer 
windows  and  even  gambrel  roofs,  old  fanlights  and 
pillared  doorways,  and  wrought-iron  newel-posts  at 
the  steps  of  the  houses,  and  fireplaces  to  make  them 
homelike;  and  if  there  are  not  enough  of  these  for 
all  to  live  with,  there  are  enough  to  look  at  and  talk 
of  and  sketch  and  to  give  that  aesthetic  atmosphere 
which  is  the  breath  of  life  to  these  enthusiasts.  And 
so,  as  O.  Henry  expressed  it,  **to  quaint  old  Green- 
wich Village  the  art  people  soon  came  prowling,  hunt- 
ing for  north  windows  and  eighteenth-century  gables 
and  Dutch  attics  and  low  rents.  Then  they  imported 
some  pewter  mugs,  and  a  chafing  dish  or  two  from 
Sixth  Avenue,  and  became  a  *  colony.'  " 

All  this  region  has  become  so  permeatively  **Bo- 
hemia''  that  whereas,  in  earlier  times,  people  have 
spoken  and  written  of  *  Agoing  down  to  Bohemia," 
they  now  merely  say,  going  down  to  Greenwich 
Village.''  Within  a  few  years  past,  many  of  the 
interesting  old  houses  have  vanished  and  some  of 
the  streets  have  lost  their  most  interesting  charac- 
ter, through  a  mighty  sweeping  away,  mainly  for  the 
Seventh  Avenue  extension  and  its  subway  construc- 
tion, but  there  is  still  much  of  the  interesting  left. 

Officially  and  formally,  no  Greenwich  Village  is 

345 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


now  to  be  found  on  the  map.  But  in  the  general 
mind  and  in  general  knowledge  it  is  very  much  on 
the  map.  Speaking  geographically,  it  is  the  region 
immediately  south  of  Chelsea,  and  it  might,  in  a  way, 
be  said  to  be  the  region  dominated  by  the  striking 
tower  of  Jefferson  Market.  It  is  a  region  of  delight- 
fully tangled  streets  which  follow  in  considerable 
degree  the  haphazard  lines  of  the  early  village  lanes ; 
for  this  was  really  a  village,  in  the  long  ago.  That,  in 
Greenwich,  West  4th  Street  actually  crosses  11th,  is 
the  last  word  in  unexpectedness ! 

In  the  very  shadow  of  Jefferson  Market  tower  is  a 
fascinating  bit,  a  cul-de-sac,  a  little  back  eddy  of 
smallish  old  houses,  a  tiny  court  opening  directly  oif 
the  busy  sidewalk  of  Sixth  Avenue,  between  10th  and 
11th  Streets,  in  a  region  of  little  stores.  It  is  bizarre 
in  its  unexpectedness :  it  is  a  bit  of  Old  London  here  in 
an  extremely  busy  part  of  New  York :  it  is  a  little  tri- 
angular space,  a  flagged  courtyard,  bordered  by  a  few 
little,  neat,  quaintish,  narrowish  old  houses:  it  was 
part  of  one  of  the  old  streets  of  the  village,  and  was 
left,  in  its  tiny  triangular  seclusion,  when  the  immedi- 
ate neighborhood  was  altered,  in  the  long  ago,  by  the 
laying  out,  with  iconoclastic  breadth  and  straightness, 
of  Sixth  Avenue.  It  is  quite  the  oddest  bit,  geograph- 
ically speaking,  in  all  New  York,  and  rejoices  in  the 
name  of  Milligan  Place ;  which  is  not  at  all  a  modern 
name,  as  it  merely  takes  the  place  of  the  Milligan  Lane 
of  early  days. 

To  begin  with,  the  honorable  condition  of  this  Green- 
wich Village,  as  a  place  in  which  to  live,  is  formally 

346 


IN  GEEENWICH  VILLAGE 


recognized  in  Westminster  Abbey.  The  founder  was 
a  British  vice-admiral  who  cut  quite  a  brave  dash  in 
his  day,  Sir  Peter  Warren,  K.B.,  M.P. — and  with 
doubtless  other  letters  and  titles  in  the  usual  English 
fashion.  He  obtained  a  good  bit  of  land,  some  300 
acres  or  so,  and  built  his  house  here. 

The  name  of  Greenwich  then  came  naturally  from 
the  sailors '  Greenwich,  on  the  Thames,  and  this  sturdy 
seaman  thought  it  a  pleasant  locality  in  which  to  end 
his  days.  He  came  here  some  five  years  before  Cap- 
tain Clarke  settled  at  Chelsea ;  he  was  not  literally  the 
first  settler  here,  but  the  first  of  any  consequence. 

Admiral  Warren  lies  in  Westminster  Abbey,  and  his 
tomb  is  marked  with  one  of  the  large  and  ornate  mon- 
uments for  which  that  structure  is  notable.  It  bears 
an  interminable  inscription,  concluding  with  the  curi- 
ous statement  that  the  Almighty  was  pleased  to  re- 
move him  from  a  place  of  honor  to  an  eternity  of 
happiness'';  and  any  real  Greenwich  Villager  would 
be  ready  to  admit  that  the  place  of  honor''  which  the 
Almighty  had  in  mind  was  Greenwich  Village;  for  the 
artistic  villagers  are  nothing  if  not  loyal. 

Warren's  wife  was  a  daughter  of  the  old  American 
house  of  DeLancey,  and  two  of  his  three  daughters 
became  the  wives  of  peers ;  one  being  married  to  the 
Earl  of  Abingdon,  whose  name  is  perpetuated  by  Ab- 
ingdon Square,  here  in  Greenwich,  and  another  being 
married  to  Baron  Southampton.  Even  in  those  early 
days,  it  will  be  noticed,  New  York  girls  had  an  attrac- 
tion for  the  English  peerage.  That  the  third  daugh- 
ter did  not  marry  a  baron  or  an  earl  seems  to  have 

347 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  TOEK 

been  because  she  fell  in  love  with  a  colonel  of  the  pro- 
saic name  of  Skinner.  But  she  was  by  no  means 
ashamed  of  the  name,  and  an  important  Greenwich 
thoroughfare  was  named  Skinner  Eoad;  but  in  the 
course  of  time  it  did  not  seem  aristocratic  enough  to 
newcomers,  and,  besides,  Colonel  Skinner  had  become 
disliked  as  an  American  who  was  an  active  Tory,  and 
so  the  road  became  Christopher  Street ;  a  name  which 
it  still  retains.  (The  Skinners*'  of  the  Neutral 
Ground,  however,  in  the  region  north  of  New  York 
City,  were  not  British,  but  American,  and  the  Cow- 
boys," their  antagonists  and  rivals,  were  British,  al- 
though rejoicing  in  a  name  which  now  seems  so  dis- 
tinctively American.) 

Old-time  mumming  is  still  existent  in  Greenwich 
Village ;  and  it  is  a  fascinating  survival :  it  is  like  some 
old-time  custom  in  an  ancient  European  town.  The 
children  of  the  village  go  out  on  the  streets,  on  holi- 
days, and  particularly  on  Thanksgiving  Day,  in  singles 
or  in  parties,  mostly  in  groups  of  from  half  a  dozen 
to  a  dozen,  some  with  masks,  but  most  of  them  with- 
out masks  and  merely  fantastically  dressed  in  simple 
home-made  costumes.  For  the  day  they  have  the  free- 
dom of  the  village,  and  old  residents  look  for  them  as 
an  institution,  and  kindly  white-haired  men ,  them- 
selves relics  of  the  past,  emerge  out  of  the  past  and 
stop  them  and  pat  them  on  the  head.  Pennies  and 
nickels  are  handed  to  the  children;  but  that  is  not 
what  they  are  after;  it  is  not  in  the  least  a  begging 
matter,  and  this  feature,  thus  slightly  kept  up,  is  but 
a  reminder  of  the  old-time  custom,  in  the  old  coun- 

348 


IN  GREENWICH  VILLAGE 


tries  of  the  world,  of  handing  out  money  to  mummers 
and  masqueraders  who  came  out  to  make  the  people 
happy. 

It  is  a  pretty  custom ;  it  is  one  of  the  oddest  things 
of  New  York ;  and  it  is  to  be  regretted  that  a  somewhat 
ruder  and  rougher  and  less  pleasant  class  of  children 
than  formerly  have  within  recent  years  begun  to  ap- 
pear as  the  mummers. 

The  village  long  retained  an  exclusiveness,  even 
after  New  York  began  to  expand,  for  there  was  no  di- 
rect approach  to  it  on  account  of  streams  and  canals 
along  the  North  Eiver  side  of  the  island,  and  the 
usual  way  was  to  follow  up  what  is  now  the  Bowery, 
and,  at  where  is  now  Astor  Place,  go  across  the  island 
to  the  westward.  A  yellow  fever  epidemic  of  1822, 
which  drew  out  all  the  people  of  New  York  who  could 
possibly  get  away,  gave  the  first  real  impetus  to  the 
growth  of  Greenwich,  for  it  was  deemed  a  healthful 
locality.  Not  only  did  people  hurry  here  in  large 
numbers,  to  escape  from  the  fever,  just  as  they  fled 
from  Philadelphia  to  Germantown,  but  even  business 
came,  and  the  name  of  Bank  Street  is  still  reminis- 
cent of  the  fact  that  the  banks  of  New  York  carried  on 
their  business  here,  deserting  down  town,  including 
the  one  which  was  specifically  the  Bank  of  New  York, 
the  first  bank  to  be  incorporated  here  after  the  close 
of  the  Revolution,  for  it  deserted  its  quarters  in  the 
made-over  Walton  mansion  on  Franklin  Square,  a 
house  which  long  ago  vanished  but  whose  grandeur 
was  such  as  to  make  it  a  matter  of  discussion  in  the 
British  Parliament,  and  came  to  Greenwich. 

349 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


Old-time  New  Yorkers  like  to  tell  that  a  minister 
named  Marcellus  used  to  declare  to  them,  when  they 
were  young,  that  so  great  had  been  the  throngs  who 
fled  panic-stricken  to  Greenwich,  that  on  one  Saturday 
he  saw  corn  growing  on  a  certain  4th  Street  corner, 
and  that  on  Monday,  two  days  later,  he  passed  by 
again  and  saw  that  in  that  brief  time  a  boarding- 
house  had  been  built,  big  enough  to  accommodate 
three  hundred  people!  And  of  course,  being  a  min- 
ister and  speaking  of  Greenwich  Village,  he  would  not 
exaggerate ! 

From  time  immemorial  it  was  the  custom  in  New 
York  to  celebrate  election  night  by  bonfires  in  the 
streets;  but  gradually  the  custom  fell  into  disuse 
throughout  the  greater  part  of  the  city,  frowned  upon 
as  it  was  by  the  police.  But  Greenwich  Village  has 
never  been  like  the  greater  part  of  the  city.  Here,  it 
is  customary  to  cling  to  old  customs.  And  therefore, 
here,  the  bonfires  blazed  high  and  merrily  when  they 
ceased  to  burn  in  other  sections.  Indeed,  there  was 
no  effort  at  all  to  check  the  election  bonfires  of  Green- 
wich until  the  stone  pavements  of  that  neighborhood 
were  largely  replaced  by  asphalt. 

It  so  happened,  that  the  burning  places  themselves 
had  been  fixed  by  tradition,  and  that  asphalt  came  to 
those  very  spots,  whereupon  it  literally  became  a 
burning  question  between  the  Greenwich  boys  and  the 
police.  The  ingenuity  of  the  boys  had  always  been 
phenomenal  in  gathering  packing-boxes  and  burnable 
debris  and  now,  to  this  ingenuity,  was  added  that  of 
dodging  the  police  and  at  the  same  time  having  their 

350 


IN  GREENWICH  VILLAGE 


fires  on  the  time-honored  spots.  I  remember  passing 
one  night,  at  Gay  Street  and  Waverley  Place,  a  huge 
bonfire,  with  towering  flames,  and  seeing  not  only  the 
customary  packing-boxes  on  the  pile,  but  even  trunks 
and  chairs  and  a  great  old  sofa,  apparently  storage 
loot  from  some  cellar. 

That  a  large  proportion  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
village — it  is  still  called  Greenwich  Village  by  every- 
body, and  not  merely  by  artists  as  a  fad — have  con- 
tinued to  be  an  English-speaking  people,  either  Ameri- 
can or  folk  of  English  or  Irish  descent,  has  aided  ma- 
terially in  preserving  old-time  ways.  Until  quite  re- 
cently, and  even  yet  by  old-timers,  Greenwich  has  been 
called  ^ '  the  American  Ward, ' '  and  this  alone  is  explan- 
atory of  much. 

Thomas  Paine,  of  the  Eevolution,  intensely  Bohe- 
mian as  he  was,  gravitated  naturally  to  Greenwich,  as 
if  feeling  instinctively  that  it  was  to  become  Bohemia 
a  century  after  his  time.  A  contemporary  descrip- 
tion has  come  down  to  us  of  his  appearance  when  he 
lived,  with  Madame  Bonneville,  on  Henry  Street  be- 
tween Christopher  and  Jones — or,  as  the  description 
by  present  names  would  be,  on  Bleecker  Street  be- 
tween Grove  and  Barrow.  He  used  to  sit,  a  spectacled 
man,  at  an  open  window,  with  a  decanter  of  brandy  by 
his  side,  a  book  on  the  table  beside  it,  his  elbow  on 
the  table,  and  his  chin  in  one  hand  and  the  other  hand 
on  the  book.  In  the  last  month  of  his  life  he  moved 
to  the  house  on  Grove  Street,  just  around  the  corner 
from  this,  in  which  he  died  in  June  of  1809.  Both  of 
these  houses  have  disappeared. 

351 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


Washington  Irving  used  playfully  to  say  that  he 
particularly  liked  the  color  of  red,  because  of  its 
being  the  color  of  his  own  slippers  and  Jefferson's 
hair  and  ^^Tom"  Paine 's  nose.  I  do  not  know  what 
was  the  incentive  to  such  inconsequence,  but  very  de- 
lightful the  inconsequence  seems. 

I  remember  a  description  by  a  contemporary  of 
the  appearance  of  Jefferson  at  a  dinner  in  Greenwich 
Village,  when  Adams  was  Vice-President:  it  was  at 
Richmond  Hill,  at  the  edge  of  Greenwich;  and  Jef- 
ferson was  dressed  with  red  waistcoat  and  red  knee- 
breeches,  which,  with  the  hair  to  which  Irving  so  hu- 
morously refers,  must  have  made  him  a  striking  object 
indeed. 

Indeed,  one  thinks  of  the  cheerful  lines  by  Eugene 
Field  about  any  color  being  the  best  so  long  as  it's 
red!  For  at  this  very  dinner  the  French  minister 
wore  not  only  earrings  but  red-heeled  shoes.  It  was 
a  time  of  colorful  possibilities  in  men's  clothes;  as 
witness  Gilbert  Stuart's  portrait,  painted  in  New 
York,  of  the  Spanish  Minister  Don  Josef  de  Jaudenes, 
now  in  the  Metropolitan  Museum,  for  the  portrait 
shows  him  dressed  with  much  of  scarlet  gorgeousness. 

Greenwich  Village  still  retains  much  of  its  old-time 
charm.  Its  narrow  streets  with  their  totally  unex- 
pected angles  and  turns — ^Waverley  Place  frankly 
forks  and  continues  in  two  directions  under  the  same 
name! — its  gambrel-roofed  attics,  its  ancient  gables, 
its  unmistakable  air  as  of  a  place  different,  all  give  it 
attraction.  No  wonder  it  became  a  haven  for  the 
young  and  the  adventurous  in  literature  and  art.  Not 

352 


IN  GREENWICH  VILLAGE 

only  did  it  offer  the  desired  north  windows  to  artists, 
but  windows  looking  in  every  conceivable  direction 
through  the  very  crookedness  and  unexpectedness. 
Throughout  the  region  are  dotted  odd  and  original 
shops,  little  shops  of  individuality,  a  sort  of  green- 
ery, yallery,  Grosvenor  gallery"  sort  of  art  shop, 
shops  where  may  be  seen  such  curiosity-provoking 
signs  as  *  *  Costumes  for  the  Pagan  Revel, '  *  or  where 
there  may  be  such  deliciously  startling  statements  as 
^*The  only  Art  Center  in  New  York,''  shops  of  fan- 
tastic and  interesting  names,  shops  largely  stocked  by 
art  students  and  school-of-design  graduates,  who 
have  found  increased  and  unexpected  opportunity  in 
the  lessening  of  imports  of  artistic  knickknacks  and 
decorative  objects  from  abroad  on  account  of  the 
war. 

And  in  Greenwich,  and  hovering  about  Washington 
Square — for  to  this  district,  in  general  nomenclature 
and  understanding,  Greenwich  has  expanded — there  is 
also  many  a  restaurant,  quietly  housed  in  old  unal- 
tered houses,  perhaps  with  some  such  name  as  the 
White  Mice,  or  the  Squirrel  Hutch,  or  the  Danish 
Oven,  or  The  Jolly  Beggars,  where  there  is  good  food 
at  reasonable  prices,  where  there  is  likely  to  be  a  great 
deal  of  tobacco  smoke,  where  there  is  wine  that  at 
least  makes  up  in  redness  if  it  chances  to  miss  any- 
thing in  flavor,  where  there  is  a  pleasant  atmosphere 
of  gayety  and  mild  excitement  and  happiness,  and  a 
meeting  and  greeting  of  cronies  and  fellow-craftsmen. 
Some  of  the  restaurants  have  a  Montmartreish-seem- 
ing  air.    Some  display  no  sign  or  name  at  all,  ap- 

353 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


pealing  to  such  as  are  delighted  by  knowing  of  a 
place  that  every  one  cannot  find. 

The  aim  at  most  of  these  restaurants  is  to  give  a 
suggestion  of  the  Italian  or  French  or  Dutch,  and 
there  are  Boul'  Miche  walls  or  sanded  floors  or  little 
scrubbed  tables  or  ghostly  long  entries  faintly  lit  or 
queer  cellar  stairs  to  descend,  to  give  the  zip  that 
seems  as  necessary  in  Greenwich  Village  as  in  their 
prototypes  in  Paris  or  Laaren  or  Munich.  And  there 
are  fine  and  well-set-up  dining  places,  too,  with  city- 
wide  reputations  for  their  perfect  cuisine,  restau- 
rants that  seem  to  be  bits  out  of  a  costly  Paris :  for 
although  the  general  atmosphere  of  all  this  sort  of  life 
must  be  that  of  a  shortage  of  money,  there  must  al- 
ways, at  the  same  time,  be  places  where  money  may 
be  freely  spent  for  the  good  things  of  life. 

After  all,  one  finds  in  any  Latin  Quarter  pretty 
much  what  he  takes  there :  if  he  takes  youth  and  ambi- 
tion and  happiness,  he  finds  happiness  and  ambition 
and  youth.  If  he  takes  a  cynical  mind  and  a  doubting 
heart,  he  sees  only  doubts  and  cynicisms. 

A  difference  between  this  life  in  New  York,  of  the 
present  day,  and  the  Bohemia  of  not  many  years  ago, 
is  that  not  many  years  ago  there  was  an  older  aver- 
age of  habitue.  Nor  do  I  merely  mean  that  the 
younger  people  of  that  day  have  grown  older.  I  mean 
that  this  Latin  Quarter  life  used  to  draw  men  and 
women  of  from,  say,  twenty-five  to  fifty  years,  and 
that  now  its  chief  appeal  is  to  young  folk  of  from 
eighteen  to  twenty-five.  The  older  writers  or  artists 
do  not  so  much  frequent  these  haunts :  Greenwich  Vil- 

354 


IN  GREENWICH  VILLAGE 


lage  life,  in  its  youthful  untrammeledness,  has  got 
away  from  them :  insurrection  is  in  the  air,  in  art  and 
literature,  in  manners  and  morals,  in  life. 

In  the  past,  besides  beginners  and  the  seekers  after 
the  curious  and  the  interesting,  many  who  had  them- 
selves done  notable  things  were  attracted ;  but  Green- 
wich Village  attracts  mainly  those  whose  fame  is  still 
to  be  made.  Bohemia  used  to  be  mostly  for  men,  and 
women  went  there  only  to  look  and  to  listen:  in  to- 
day's version  of  this  life,  women  may  be  said  to  out- 
Bohemianize  the  men — and  they  are  mostly  very 
young  women  indeed,  and  most  of  them  not  long  out 
of  college,  all  of  them  bent  on  *  heading  their  own 
lives,''  as  they  express  it,  and  many  of  them  staked 
by  their  families  while  they  dream  their  dreams  and 
keep  their  shops  and  write  their  dramas  and  their 
scenarios  and  their  poems  and  their  little  revolution- 
ary editorials  for  their  own  very  ^ liberal"  publica- 
tions. 

Greenwich  Village  stands  for  unrest,  but  it  also 
stands  for  happiness.  It  gives  an  outlook  upon  life. 
It  gives  music  and  conversation  and  touches  of  res- 
taurant happiness  to  those  who  cannot  afford  the  ex- 
travagance of  uptown.  It  gives  color  to  many  a  life 
that  would  otherwise  be  but  drab.  And  it  is  interest- 
ing to  see  and  to  hear  Greenwich  Village  working  and 
talking,  eating,  drinking,  dancing,  and  making  merry, 
or  taking  life  seriously.  In  the  studios  and  in  the  res- 
taurants you  see  some  who  are  thrilled  and  some  who 
are  amused :  you  hear  eager  discussion  of  everything 
on  earth  or  below  or  above  the  earth ;  you  are  your- 

355 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOKK 


self  amused  or  interested,  you  feel  tolerant  or  critical: 
when  you  must  find  your  way  to  a  restaurant,  by  dim 
lamplight,  through  a  covered  passage  and  across  a 
littered  yard,  you  find  it  difficult  to  take  Greenwich 
Village  seriously :  but  somehow  it  must  be  taken  with  a 
good  deal  of  seriousness  because  it  takes  itself  so 
seriously ;  as  when  in  a  restaurant  you  will  suddenly 
hear  a  young  man  declaim  his  own  verses,  passion- 
ately, to  his  young  companions. 


356 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 


WASHINGTON  SQUAEE 


HE  American  Revolution  gave 
the  English  an  unusual  oppor- 
tunity, of  which  they  were 
prompt  to  take  advantage,  to 
give  honor  to  such  as  are  of 
what  may  be  called  irregular 
pedigree;  for  England  does 
not  frown  upon  irregularity, 
if  it  be  royal,  or  even  only 
noble. 

General  Howe,  Viscount 
Howe,  the  commander  at  New  York,  was  the  son  of 
an  illegitimate  daughter  of  King  George  the  Second, 
which  fact  made  his  advancement  easy.  Admiral 
Howe,  Earl  Howe,  Ms  brother,  who  brought  the  fleet 
to  New  York — and  it  will  be  noticed  that  there  was 
never  a  shortage  of  titles  for  the  distinguished  in 
descent — was  equally  fortunate  in  winning  place 
through  the  same  royal  connection.  General  Bur- 
goyne  was  not  so  fortunate  as  to  be  left-handedly  re- 
lated to  royalty,  but  this  omission  was  graciously 
overlooked  in  consideration  of  the  fact  that  he  was 
left-handedly  the  son  of  a  lord. 

The  royal  governor  of  New  Jersey,  William 

357 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


Franklin,  was  the  illegitimate  son  of  Benjamin.  And 
that  the  future  William  the  Fourth  was  here  during 
the  Eevolution  seems  only  natural  when  it  is  remem- 
bered what  left-handed  additions  he  was  himself  to 
make  to  the  British  peerage. 

I  shall  not  look  into  the  entire  list;  but  it  may  be 
mentioned^  in  passing,  that  although  the  gallant 
Percy,  afterwards  to  be  Duke  of  Northumberland, 
who  so  bravely  fought  America,  was  legitimate,  his 
brother,  who  after  the  Revolution  became  associ- 
ated both  picturesquely  and  importantly  with  the 
United  States,  was  but  his  left-handed  brother  after 
all. 

Lord  Cornwallis  seems  to  have  been  of  pedigree 
irreproachable :  and  yet,  there  comes  to  mind  a  curi- 
ous story.  When  his  son  was  to  marry  the  daugh- 
ter of  the  celebrated  Jane,  Duchess  of  Gordon,  he, 
Cornwallis,  broke  off  the  match,  telling  the  duchess 
frankly  that  it  was  on  account  of  the  insanity  that 
would  be  inherited  from  her  husband.  Whereupon 
the  duchess  told  him,  plainly,  that  he  need  have  no 
fear,  as  there  was  not  a  drop  of  Gordon  blood  in  her 
daughter's  body.  At  which,  the  loser  of  Yorktown 
unhesitatingly  allowed  the  marriage  to  proceed,  not 
objecting  to  actual  illegitimacy  so  long  as  the  form 
of  respectability  was  observed. 

Nor  does  this  story  come  from  some  American 
source.  It  is  on  the  authority  of  Samuel  Rogers,  the 
poet,  than  whom  no  man  was  ever  more  British  in 
feeling;  and  he  tells  the  story  with  glee. 

In  his  more  than  ninety  years  of  life,  always  meet- 

358 


WASHINGTON  SQUARE 


ing  the  most  interesting  people,  what  myriad  stories 
Eogers  heard,  what  friends  and  acquaintance  he 
made,  in  what  a  vast  number  of  homes  he  was  enter- 
tained !  And  one  of  his  comments,  as  he  neared  life 's 
close,  remains  especially  in  the  memory,  because,  al- 
though he  was  himself  not  thinking  of  New  York, 
but  only  of  his  beloved  London,  it  sets  forth  one  of 
the  most  vital  differences  between  New  York  and 
London.  For  his  comment  was,  that  to  any  Lon- 
doner who  has  reached  an  advanced  age,  a  walk 
through  the  streets  of  London  is  like  a  walk  in  a 
cemetery,  because  he  passes  so  many  houses,  now 
inhabited  by  strangers,  where  he  used  to  spend  happy 
hours  with  those  long  since  dead  and  gone. 

But  nobody  could  write  thus  about  New  York,  for 
in  this  city  not  only  have  the  people  of  the  past  gone, 
but  the  houses  in  which  they  dwelt  have  long  since 
also  vanished.  Indeed,  there  is  only  one  region  left, 
where  an  American,  old  enough  to  look  back  like 
Rogers,  over  nearly  a  century  of  life,  could  find  the 
homes  of  friends  of  long  ago,  and  that  district  is 
Washington  Square. 

A  few  other  cities,  notably  Boston  and  Philadel- 
phia, profoundly  possess  what  may  be  termed  the 
feeling  of  home  respectability,  that  feeling  of  family 
pride  which  comes  from  permanence  of  home,  but  in 
New  York  there  is  a  complete  absence  of  this  feeling, 
except  in  Washington  Square.  To  have  a  house  in 
Washington  Square,  and  to  be  able  to  say  that  you 
inherited  it,  marks  the  highest  point  of  social  ex- 
clusiveness. 

359 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


Speaking  generally,  in  New  York  a  man  must 
stand  on  his  own  legs  and  not  on  those  of  his  grand- 
father. There  is  little  of  ^ ^family,''  as  the  term  is 
generally  understood.  It  is  not  a  factor  in  everyday 
life.  Washington  Square  is  the  only  part  of  the  city 
which  gives  a  background  suggestive  of  family  and 
of  old-time  descent. 

It  is,  too,  the  spot  in  all  the  city  which  best  retains 
the  old-time  picturesqueness ;  and  this  although  it  is 
only,  after  all,  the  northern  half  which  has  fine  old 
homes.  The  northern  part  is  of  such  strength  and 
dignity  that  it  dominates.  The  ordinary  park  has 
air;  but  Washington  Square  has  atmosphere. 

The  square  itself  is  a  great,  sweet  area,  thick  with 
elms  and  sycamores,  and  has  long  been  the  part  of 
New  York  most  often  made  use  of  by  story  writers, 
not  necessarily  to  point  a  moral  but  certainly  to 
adorn  many  a  tale.  But  whereas  it  used  to  be  that 
every  author  used  to  have  a  heroine  on  the  north  side 
of  the  Square,  it  has  suddenly  become  the  custom  to 
write  of  the  southern  half,  with  its  connection  with 
Latin  Quarter  life,  and  with  the  tenement  dwellers 
sweeping  up  from  the  southward  against  it.  It  was 
long  ago  that  Bunner,  in  his  once  famous  Midge," 
chose,  for  the  house  that  was  that  story's  setting,  a 
gloomy  old  iron-balconied  dwelling  now  at  the  edge 
of  where  Sullivan  Street  has  been  cut  through  to  the 
Square.  And  Townsend,  he  of  ^'Chimmie  Fadden'' 
fame,  once  wrote  a  short  story,  **Just  Across  the 
Square,"  in  which  with  tragic  insight  he  made  the 
north  and  south  sides  react  upon  one  another. 

360 


WASHINGTON  SQUARE 

The  Washington  Arch  at  the  center  of  the  north- 
ern side,  the  fine  old  houses,  which  are  wealth  and 
social  standing  personified,  the  Italians  from  the 
nearby  tenements — it  is  the  combination  of  all  this, 
and  an  atmosphere  of  distinction,  that  give  Washing- 
ton Square  its  charm. 

On  the  south  side  of  the  square,  looking  out  over 
the  greenery  at  the  Arch  and  the  old  mansions,  stands 
a  church,  the  Judson  Memorial,  designed,  in  beautiful 
Italian  style,  by  Stanford  White;  he  loved  the  tawny 
yellow  buildings  of  old  Italy,  and  loved  to  follow 
them,  and  this  represents  his  finest  tawny-yellow  tri- 
umph. The  campanile,  with  its  arcaded  summit, 
rises  Giotto-like,  with  its  use  of  Giotto's  ideas  of  the 
relative  size  of  tower  windows,  with  small  ones  at 
the  bottom  and  large  ones,  increasingly,  toward  the 
top.  And  every  night,  as  it  has  done  every  night 
during  the  quarter  of  a  century  that  the  church  has 
stood  here,  a  cross  of  light  shines  on  the  top  of  the 
campanile. 

It  is  one  of  the  facts  that  illustrate  the  changes  that 
have  come  in  New  York  life,  that  when  this  church, 
with  its  Italian  style,  was  built,  no  Italians,  or  prac- 
tically none,  lived  near  by,  but  that  gradually  they 
have  filled  up  the  tenement  streets  immediately  to 
the  southward  to  the  practical  exclusion  of  other 
races.  And  off  at  one  side  of  the  Square,  a  Garibaldi 
stands  pedestaled,  with  half  drawn  sword  in  hand 
as  if  with  some  thought  of  holding  this  district  for 
the  Italians  forever. 

Many  French  used  to  congregate  near  the  square, 

361 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


nor  have  they  even  yet  entirely  disappeared  tinder 
the  preponderance  of  the  Italians,  and  I  remember 
noticing  a  Fourth  of  July  meeting  here,  with  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  read  in  French  and  a 
fiery  address  delivered  in  Italian  by  a  grandson  of 
Garibaldi. 

Near  the  church,  on  the  southern  side  of  the 
square,  is  a  day  nursery,  with  its  lower  floor  iron- 
latticed,  and  as  evening  approaches  it  is  a  sweet  and 
at  the  same  time  a  pathetic  sight  to  see  the  little  chil- 
dren swarming  and  climbing  on  this  lattice,  looking 
out  eagerly  for  their  returning  mothers. 

In  the  spring,  many  birds  come  here,  and,  in  par- 
ticular, scarlet  tanagers  love,  in  mid-May,  to  make 
the  square  their  stopping-place  for  a  few  days,  flit- 
ting about,  among  the  greenery,  in  a  glow  of  such 
vivid  beauty  as  to  seem  unreal,  as  to  seem,  indeed, 
here  in  the  heart  of  New  York  City,  almost  a  vagary 
of  the  imagination. 

The  fine  old  houses  are  not  really  so  very  old,  al- 
though they  carry  themselves  with  such  an  air  of 
established  permanence.  They  are  not  Colonial:  in 
period  they  are  not  even  of  that  early  nineteenth  cen- 
tury which  gave  so  many  notable  dwellings  to  other 
of  the  Eastern  cities.  They  are  of  a  date  subsequent 
to  1825 ;  most  of  them  of  the  early  1830 's ;  some  of  the 
'40 's.  After  all,  it  really  would  not  do  to  have  the 
buildings  too  old  which  are  most  markedly  typical  of 
the  best  of  New  York. 

The  glimmering  greenery,  the  lushness  of  growth, 
rouse  thoughts  of  the  tens  of  thousands  who  were 

362 


WASHINGTON  SQUARE 


carelessly  put  here  to  sleep  their  last  sleep  beneath 
where  are  now  the  grass  and  pavements  of  this 
square ;  it  has  been  estimated,  but  personally  I  feel  a 
little  doubt  of  the  figures,  that  more  than  one  hun- 
dred thousand  paupers  were  buried  here ;  at  any  rate, 
there  were  very,  very  many.  Before  it  was  Wash- 
ington Square  it  was  the  Parade  Ground,  and  before 
that,  until  the  1820 's,  it  was  the  city's  Potter's  Field. 

The  stately  houses  look  statelily  over  the  once- 
while  pauper  burial-place,  aristocratically  uncon- 
scious of  anything  disagreeable  in  the  past.  They 
are  houses  of  aloofness:  quite  superior  to  what 
might  repress  the  pride  of  houses  of  weaker  char- 
acter. 

I  mention  what  was  here  in  the  past,  not  only  be- 
cause it  was  a  striking  feature  of  the  city's  develop- 
ment which  set  the  most  exclusive  Knickerbocker 
families  looking  over  a  great  Potter's  Field,  but  also 
because  it  points  out,  to  use  a  famous  Tennysonian 
couplet,  New  York's  method  of  rising  on  stepping- 
stones  of  its  dead  selves  to  higher  things,"  and  be- 
cause it  is  always  well  to  remember  that  it  is  the 
present  that  counts,  not  only  with  squares  but  with 
individuals,  and  not  the  past. 

In  1830  Washington  Square  witnessed  a  curious 
celebration.  It  seemed  to  New  York,  for  some  in- 
scrutable reason,  that  it  ought  to  meddle  with  Euro- 
pean affairs  by  celebrating  the  dethronement  of 
Charles  the  Tenth,  King  of  France,  which  had  taken 
place  in  that  year,  and  so  a  procession  marched  from 
the  Tammany  Hall  of  that  day  to  Washington  Square, 

363 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 

and  here  there  was  a  great  meeting,  presided  over  by 
Monroe  of  the  Doctrine,  who  was  then  a  resident  of 
New  York,  and  in  the  group  on  the  platform  were 
gathered  a  few  most  curiously  notable  men :  for  there 
was  Alexander  Whaley,  who  long  before  had  been 
one  of  the  Boston  Tea  Party,''  and  there  was 
Enoch  Crosby,  who  had  been  in  the  secret  service  in 
the  Revolution  and  was  supposed  to  be  the  original 
of  the  hero  of  Cooper's  then  world-famous  book,  the 
^^Spy,"  and  there  was  John  Van  Arsdale,  who  had 
climbed  the  Battery  flagpole  and  taken  down  the 
British  flag  on  the  day  of  the  Evacuation  of  New 
York,  and  there  was  Anthony  Glenn,  a  Revolutionary 
officer  bearing  the  American  flag  which  he  had 
hoisted  in  place  of  the  one  that  Van  Arsdale  brought 
down,  and  there  was  David  Williams,  one  of  the  three 
scouts  who  had  captured  Major  Andre.  Aaron  Burr, 
one  notices,  was  not  invited.  What  a  fascinating 
group  they  made,  those  venerable  men  who  have 
come  down  from  a  former  generation."  How  the 
very  thought  of  it  brings  up  pictures  of  the  great 
events  in  which  they  had  taken  part,  half  a  century 
before  they  thus  came  together  in  Washington 
Square ! 

Following  the  Spanish  War,  the  Seventy-first 
Regiment  came  back  to  New  York,  bearing  their  dead. 
On  the  way  to  their  armory  they  marched  through 
Washington  Square,  and  I  remember  what  a  hush 
fell  as  they  approached  the  Arch.  Between  throngs 
of  bareheaded  men,  and  women  in  whose  eyes  shone 
tears,   the   soldiers    slowly   marched.    The  Dead 

364 


WASHINGTON  SQUARE 


March  sounded  solemnly.  Then  there  was  but  the 
muffled  beat  of  drums,  the  slow  footfalls  of  the  sol- 
diers, and  now  and  then  the  gentle  clink  of  steel.  A 
profound  silence  fell  upon  the  crowd  as  the  colors 
passed,  all  draped  in  black,  and  then  came  the  slow 
rumbling  of  wheels,  as  the  flag-wrapped  coffins,  upon 
caissons,  went  by.  Many  an  important  parade  has 
passed  through  Washington  Arch,  but  none  can  dim 
the  memory,  for  those  who  saw  it,  of  the  home-com- 
ing of  the  Seventy-first. 

But,  turning  from  serious  matters,  it  is  a  delight  to 
think  of  the  Washington  Square  pump  of  long  ago. 
For  in  defiance  of  the  laws  of  hygiene,  of  all  consid- 
erations of  health,  of  the  laws  of  sanitary  science,  as 
the  present  day  understands  hygiene  and  health  and 
sanitary  science,  the  favorite  drinking  water  of  these 
fashionable  folk,  before  the  days  of  Croton  water, 
came  from  a  pump  that  stood  just  a  trifle  to  the  east 
of  the  base  of  the  Arch.  Even  after  the  Croton  water 
was  really  in  the  houses,  in  the  1840 's,  it  was  with 
reluctance  and  only  gradually  that  the  use  of  this 
pump  was  relinquished — and  all  this  although  the 
antecedent  use  of  the  square  was  of  common  knowl- 
edge. The  water  was  supposed,  and  no  wonder,  to 
have  a  piquant  tang  of  individuality,  which  made  it  a 
rival  of  the  famous  Tea  Water  Pump  at  the  corner 
of  Roosevelt  and  Chatham  Streets  which  was  pas- 
sionately held  by  its  devotees  to  supply  better  tea 
water  than  any  other  pump  in  the  city.  In  early 
days,  preceding  the  advent  of  Croton,  the  Manhattan 
Company  operated  a  water  system  through  a  consid- 

365 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YORK 


erable  part  of  the  lower  New  York  of  that  period;  and 
the  upper  part  of  the  city,  which  then  meant,  say, 
Greenwich  Village,  Washington  Square  and  there- 
abouts, had  the  opportunity  to  get  water  from  a  sup- 
ply that  was  gathered  in  cisterns  where  Jefferson 
Market  now  stands  and  from  there  was  pumped  to  a 
reservoir  at  what  is  now  the  corner  of  Broadway  and 
13th  Street.  But  it  was  hard  to  lure  New  Yorkers 
away  from  street  pumps,  which  had  been  set  up, 
through  the  early  city,  at  intervals  of  about  four 
blocks. 

Behind  the  stately  homes  of  the  north  side  of  the 
square  is  a  sort  of  circumscribed  spaciousness,  giv- 
ing openness  of  air  and  aspect  and  sunlight,  and  the 
rear  windows  of  the  houses  look  down  over  smallish, 
ordered,  walled-in  gardens,  into  Washington  Mews, 
behind  the  houses  east  of  Fifth  Avenue,  and  into 
Macdougal  Alley  behind  those  west. 

The  Mews,  retaining  its  old-fashioned  designation 
from  the  days  of  horses  and  carriages,  is  now  within 
great  iron  entrance-gates,  and  has  largely  been  given 
over  to  artists'  studio-homes,  which  are  picturesque 
in  the  extreme,  in  blendings  of  soft  grays  and  greens, 
and  with  enclosed  and  formal  gardens — which  show 
what  all  New  York  could  do  if  it  chose ! — ^between  the 
new  studios  facing  into  the  Mews,  and  a  line  of  beau- 
tiful studio  buildings,  also  recently  built,  and  inten- 
tionally of  old-European  effect,  facing  on  Eighth 
Street. 

Macdougal  Alley  has  also  become  a  studio  resort 
for  sculptors  and  artists,  and  a  ^'festa"  given  there 

366 


WASHINGTON  SQUARE 


for  the  Red  Cross  attracted  the  attention  of  the  en- 
tire city,  and  of  every  visitor,  by  the  triumphant 
transformation  of  a  narrow  way,  lined  with  plain 
little  buildings,  into  a  bazaar  and  plaisance  of  de- 
light, with  pinnacles  and  towers  of  beauty. 

The  Washington  Square  mansions  are  not  nearly 
so  costly,  not  nearly  of  so  great  size,  as  are  the  more 
ostentatious  mansions  of  upper  Fifth  Avenue  and 
Riverside,  but  they  hold  their  own  with  distinction. 
*^Prue  and  I''  used  to  see  diners-out  go  trippingly 
down  the  steps  of  these  sober-fronted  mansions  as 
evening  approached.  And  only  last  evening,  as  I 
passed  one  of  the  broad-fronted  old  homes,  the  owner 
and  his  wife  went  down  the  steps  and  crossed  the 
sidewalk  to  their  waiting  motor,  walking  on  a  long 
red  velvet  carpet  which  had  been  laid  for  them,  al- 
though the  steps  and  sidewalk  were  absolutely  dry: 
and  the  motor,  with  two  liveried  men  on  the  box, 
rolled  away,  and  two  other  liveried  men,  bent  double, 
walked  backward,  heavily  drawing  in  the  rich  carpet 
which  had  kept  the  shoes  of  wealth  from  the  contami- 
nation of  stone:  and  I  could  only  think  of  ^^The 
tender  and  delicate  woman  among  you,  who  would 
not  adventure  to  set  the  sole  of  her  foot  upon  the 
ground  for  delicateness  and  tenderness'' —  But 
that,  with  the  somber  summary  of  what  would  follow 
from  pride,  was  written  well  over  three  thousand 
years  ago! 

Henry  James,  in  his  novel  of  Washington 
Square,''  pictured  Doctor  Sloper,  in  1835,  building 
himself  *'a  handsome,  wide-fronted  house,  with  a  big 

367 


THE  BOOK  OF  NEW  YOEK 


"balcony  before  the  drawing-room  windows,  and  a 
flight  of  white  marble  steps  ascending  to  a  portal 
which  was  also  faced  with  white  marble";  this  struc- 
ture and  its  neighbors  being  **very  solid  and  honor- 
able dwellings,"  and  Washington  Square  securing 
through  them  ^*a  kind  of  established  repose." 

There  is  a  mellowness  about  these  homes,  an  air  of 
leisured  ease,  of  serenity,  of  tranquillity,  which  are 
the  more  to  be  remarked  from  being  in  a  city  not 
notable  for  tranquillity,  serenity  or  ease.  There  is  a 
classic  dignity  about  them,  with  their  straight  roof 
lines,  and  their  attic  windows  looking  out  through 
open-work  grills  of  Eoman-key,  and  their  balustrades 
and  rails,  their  large-windowed,  broad-fronted  ampli- 
tude. They  are  sedately  charming  and  sedately 
aloof,  with  their  white  marble  steps  leading  up  to 
their  fine  doorways,  with  straight-edged  sidelights 
and  overlights;  with  glimpses  of  great  broad  vesti- 
bules in  exquisite  creamy  white,  of  silver  doorknobs, 
and  of  great  staircases.  In  the  narrow  spaces  be- 
tween house-fronts  and  sidewalk — for  the  houses  all 
stand  aloofly  back — is  pleasant  greenery,  with  little 
evergreens  and  box;  and  one  old  box-bush  still  re- 
mains, a  survival  of  the  past.  And  up  the  fronts  of 
a  few  of  these  old  brick  houses  still  rise  old  wistaria 
garlands,  the  typical  and  greatly  loved  wistarias  of 
an  earlier  New  York,  that  gloriously  toss  their  purple 
plumage  in  the  air  of  spring. 

The  effectiveness  of  the  square  is  due  in  great  de- 
gree to  the  beauty  and  the  dignity  and  the  noble  open 
setting  of  the  two  houses  at  the  Fifth  Avenue  corners ; 

368 


WASHINGTON  SQUARE 

and  the  final  touch  of  felicitousness  was  given  to  it 
when  Washington  Arch  arose,  in  all  its  fine  brave  dig- 
nity, its  captivating  charm. 

For  the  dedication,  in  1889,  of  the  temporary  arch 
which  immediately  preceded  this  arch  of  white  gran- 
ite. New  York  arranged  a  program  which  followed  so 
far  as  possible  the  events  of  1789  which  marked  the 
beginning  of  the  United  States  as  a  nation  under  a 
Constitution.  President  Harrison  came  to  the  city, 
and  was  landed  as  Washington  on  his  coming  had 
been  landed,  at  the  foot  of  Wall  Street,  on  the  East 
Eiver.  He  went  to  church  service,  as  Washington 
had  gone  to  service,  at  old  St.  PauPs  on  Broadway. 
But  when  he  came  to  Washington  Square  to  preside 
at  the  dedication  of  the  commemorative  arch,  he  came 
to  a  place  which  in  Washington's  day  was  existent 
only  as  uncultivated  fields. 

The  present  arch,  honored  by  New  Yorkers  above 
anything  else  in  the  city,  is  especially  to  be  honored 
for  the  words  which  it  bears  imperishably  across  its 
top ;  a  motto  to  be  read  by  looking  up  from  the  open 
square,  on  the  southern  side  of  the  memorial;  for  the 
words  are  those  of  Washington's  nobly  imperishable 
adjuration : 

**Let  us  raise  a  standard  to  which  the  wise  and  the 
honest  can  repair." 


I 

369 


INDEX 


— A.— 

Accidents,  street,  246 

Allen  Street,  116 

Andre:  capture  of,  313;  with 
Arnold,  317,  318,  319,  320; 
slandering  Wayne,  320;  exe- 
cution of,  321 

Appellate  Court  building,  150 

Aquarium,  the,  38 

Architects:  Cram,  192;  Mc- 
Comb,  64;  Ren  wick,  191;  Up- 
john, 45,  171,  172;  Stanford 
White,  121,  149,  150,  160,  361 

Arnold,  Benedict:  317,  318,  319, 
320,  333 

Arthur,  President:  home  of,  31; 
statue  of,  151 

Ascension,  Church  of  the,  171 

Astor  Place,  102 

— B.— 

Bacon,  Lord,  12 
Bancroft,  George,  17,  47 
Bartholdi,  154 
Battery,  the,  34-40,  338 
Baxter  Street,  83 
Beeeher,  291 
Bible  House,  85 
Billop  house,  335 
Blackwell's  Island,  100,  148 
Blennerhassets,  the,  74,  287 
Block,  Adrian,  3 
Bohemia,  343,  345,  354,  355 
Bonaparte:  Joseph  and  Jerome, 
275 

Booth,  home  of,  161 
Boroughs  of  New  York,  4 
Botanical  Gardens,  296 


Bowery,  the,  81-87,  163 
Bowling  Green,  40-1 
Bowne  house,  293 
Brevoort,  169 
Bridges,  68-9 
Broad  Street,  53-56 
Broadway,  70-71,  98,  213-227 
Bronx,  the,  294,  295 
Brook  Farmers,  in  New  York, 
258-9 

Bryan,  William  Jennings,  154 

Bryant,  William  Cullen,  17,  18, 
188,  228 

Bunner,  29,  39,  360 

Burr,  Aaron:  on  the  Battery, 
35;  at  trial  of  Weeks,  64,  65; 
charm  of,  285;  his  quarrel  and 
duel  with  Hamilton,  281-3; 
marriage  with  Madame  Jumel, 
277,  289;  his  power  in  the 
courts,  282;  home  of,  284;  his 
projected  empire,  286,  287 ; 
visit  to  Europe,  288-9 

Burr,  Theodosia,  35 

— C— 

Cardiff  Giant,  39 
Carnegie,  home  of,  197,  198 
Castle  Garden,  37,  38,  39 
Cathedrals:   Episcopalian,  271; 

Roman    Catholic,    100,  191; 

Russian,  136-8 
Cemeteries:     Marble,    32;  old 

Jewish,  86;    St.   John's,  75; 

Trinity,  48-50;   in  Brooklyn 

and  Queens,  293 
Charities,  253-7 
Chatham  Square,  85 
Chelsea,  164-7 


INDEX 


Cherry  Hill,  67 

"Chesapeake"  and  "Shannon,"  49 
Chinese  quarter,   117,  139-142, 
238-240 

Churches  and  chapels:  St.  Bene- 
dict the  Moor,  245;  St. 
Esprit,  299;  St.  George,  163; 
St.  Mark,  3,  89-95;  St.  Pat- 
rick, 76-7;  St.  Paul,  57-59; 
St.  Paul  Eastchester,  295;  St. 
John,  72-5;  St.  Peter,  331; 
St.  Thomas,  192;  Ascension, 
171;  Collegiate,  190;  First 
Presbyterian,  172;  German 
Reformed,  268;  Grace,  77-80; 
Little  Church  around  the 
Corner,  173-6;  in  the  Fort, 
190;  Madonna  di  Pompei,  75; 
Madison  Square,  149;  Mora- 
vian, 339;  Judson  Memorial, 
361;  Quaker,  163;  Trinity, 
45-51 ;  Our  Lady  of  Lourdes, 
138 

Cincinnati,  Society,  124-7 
City  Hall,  59-65,  67 
Claremont,  264 
Cleopatra's  Needle,  202-4 
Clinton,  De  Witt,  63,  263,  331 
Clubs:  Bread  and  Cheese,  188; 
Friendly,    187;    Lotus,  189; 
Metropolitan,    187;  National 
Arts,     161;     Players',  161; 
Princeton,   161;  Salmagundi, 
187;  Union,  189;  University, 
190 

College  of  City  of  New  York, 
272 

"Colonel  Carter,"  28,  30 
Collegiate  Church,  190 
Colonnade  Row,  22 
Columbia  University,  262-3 
Coney  Island,  339-342 
Conkling,  151 

Cooper,  J.  Fenimore,  188,  189, 
316 

Cooper  Union,  87-S 
Cram,  192 

Crawford,  F.  Marion,  29 
Croton  water,  365 
Crystal  Palace,  182 


Cunningham,  Provost,  50 
Curtis,    George    William,  173, 

258,  259,  367 
Customs,  old,  246,  348 

— D.— 

Dana,  Charles  A.,  253 

Davis,  Richard  Harding,  29,  105, 

171,  174 
Delmonico's,  76,  155 
De  Pauw  Row,  121 
Dewey,  Admiral,  37 
Dickens:  and  Irving,  23;  Liud- 

ley    Murray's    ghost,  205; 

literary    banquet,     156;  his 

American  geography,  329 
District  Leaders,  128-133 
Division  Street,  115 
Dobb's  Ferry,  311 
Dongan,  Governor,  331,  191 
Drake,  Joseph  Rodman,  24,  25 

— E.— 

Edward  the  Seventh;  in  New 
York  when  Prince  of  Wales, 
47 

Evictions,  118-9 

— F.— 

Farragut,  150-151 
Federal  Hall,  51 

Fifth  Avenue,  103,  104,  150,  168- 

204 

Fifth  Avenue  Hotel,  150 
Flushing,  293 
Fort  Izzard,  338 
Fort  Washington,  265-267 
Forty- Second  Street,  181,  182, 
183 

Foundling  Hospital,  256-7 
Franklin:    in  New  York,  332; 
Elizabeth   Schuyler,   280;  re- 
ply to  Howe,  335;  statue  of, 
186 

Fraunces  Tavern,  55 
Frick,  H.  C,  home  of,  197 
Fulton,  Robert,  336-337 


INDEX 


Furniture,  early  American:  in 
City  Hall,  64;  in  Metropolitan 
Museum,  201 

— O.— 

Gallatin,  48 

Gardiner,  Julia,  22 

Garibaldi,  339,  361 

Genet,  Citizen,  331 

George,  Henry,  79-80 

George  the  Third;   lead  statue 

of,  41-43 
Goelet  mansion,  104 
Golden  Hill,  18,  19 
Governor's  Room,  61 
Grace  Church,  77-80,  169 
Gramercy  Park,  159-162 
Grand  Central  Station,  212 
Grand  Street,  115,  122 
Grant:  home  of,  31;  tomb  of, 

261 

Graves :  Drake,  24 ;  Gallatin,  48 ; 
Grant,  261;  Hamilton,  48; 
Irving,  314;  Kearney,  49; 
"Boss"  Kelly,  76;  Landais, 
77;  Lawrence,  49;  Monroe, 
32;  Montgomery,  57;  Nor- 
deck,  59;  Osborne,  49;  Roche 
Fontaine,  59;  Sloughter,  95; 
Stirling,  49;  Stuyvesant,  94; 
Charlotte  Temple,  49;  Tomp- 
kins, 95;  Revolutionary  pris- 
oners, 49,  50 
Greeks,  the,  117,  142 
Greenwich  Village,  343-356 

— H.— 

"Hail,  Columbia!"  52 

Hale,  Nathan,  65 

Halleck,  Fitz-Greene:  City  Hall 

verse,  2;  lines  on  Drake,  25; 

"Marco    Bozzaris,"    25;  at 

Jumel  mansion,  278;  portrait 

of,  185 

Hamilton,  Alexander:  home  on 
Broadway,  45;  home  on  Wash- 
ington Heights,  283;  mobbed, 
64;  at  Weeks  trial,  64-5;  at 


King's  College,  263;  General 
Clinton,  333;  portrait  of,  62; 
desk  of,  64;  marriage  of,  280; 
quarrel  and  duel  with  Burr, 
281-3;  funeral  of,  285;  grave 
of,  48;  monument  to,  284 

Harlem,  270-271 

Harlem  Heights,  Battle  of,  262 

Harriman  Drive,  315 

Hebrews,  83,  86,  107-109,  122-3, 
143,  167,  236 

Hell  Gate  Bridge,  68 

Henry,  O.,  345 

Hispanic  Museum,  264 

Hotels,  169,  179,  180,  220-221, 
248 

Houdon,  201 

Howe:  General  and  Admiral;  9, 

335,  357 
Howells,  William  Dean,  28 
Hudson,  Henry,  91,  328 
Hudson  Park,  75 
Hudson  River,  302-317,  321 
Huguenots,  the,  297-9 
Hutchinson,  Anne,  home  of,  295 

— I.— 

Illegitimacy,  and  British  gen- 
erals, 357-8 

Inman,  portraits  by,  62 

Irving,  Washington:  13,  18,  189; 
birthplace  of,  19;  Central 
Park,  17;  Knickerbocker  His- 
tory, 19,  20;  meeting  with 
Washington,  21;  Colonnade 
Row,  21,  22;  home  on  Irving 
Place,  22;  admired  by  Scott 
and  Dickens,  23;  "Tom" 
Paine,  352;  John  Howard 
Payne,  23;  the  Bronx,  294-5; 
home  at  Irvington,  311-12; 
Sleepy  Hollow,  313;  grave  of, 
314 

Italians,  143-6,  235,  236,  361 
Izzard,  Fort,  338 

James,  Henry,  28,  46,  367 


INDEX 


Jaudenes,  352 

Jefferson,  Joseph,  86,  174-5 
Jefferson,  Thomas:   portrait  of, 

324;  costume  of,  352 
Jefferson  Market,  346 
"Jerseys,  The,"  294 
Jones,  John  Paul,  76-7;  statue 

of,  201 
Judson  Memorial,  361 
Jumel  Mansion,  272-278 
Jumels,  the,  275-278 

— K.— 

Kent,  James,  188 
Kidd,  Captain,  on  Wall  Street, 
53 

King,  Rufus,  home  of,  293 

King's  Ferry,  315 

Kipling,  70,  71 

"Knickerbocker,"  19 

Knox,  General:  85,  252;  portrait 

of,  324 
Kosciuszko,  323,  324 

— L.— 

La  Farge,  171 

Lafayette:  love  for  New  York, 
1;  visit  in  1824,  36-7;  statue 
of,  153;  portrait  of,  185;  at 
Jumel  Mansion,  275 
Lafayette  Place,  21 
Landais,  Pierre,  76-7 
Lansing,  Judge,  64-5 
Lawrence,  Captain  James,  49 
Leisler,  Jacob,  65-67 
Liberty,  Statue  of,  154,  334 
Lights,  the,  of  New  York,  221- 
227 

Lincoln:  at  Cooper  Union,  88- 

89;  statue  of,  155 
Lind,  Jenny,  38 
Litchfield,  42 

Little  Church  around  the  Cor- 
ner, 173-6 

— M.~ 

Macdougal  Alley,  366 
MacMonnies,  65,  323 


Madison  Square,  16,  147-152 
Madison  Square  Garden,  149 
•^Manhattan,"  5 
Manhattan  Bridge,  68,  86,  87 
Marble  Cemeteries,  32 
"Marco  Bozzaris,"  25 
Markets,  street,  112-115 
May  Day  parties,  199 
McAuley,  Jerry,  255 
McComb,  John,  64 
Metropolitan     Life  Building, 
147-9 

Metropolitan  Museum,  200-2 
Milligan  Place,  346 
Minetta  Lane  and  Street,  75 
Monroe,  President:  home  of,  31; 

where  buried,  32 
Montgomery,  General,  57-9 
Moore,  Clement  C,  165 
Moravians,  the,  339 
Morgan,  J.  P.,  53,  164,  212 
Morris,  Roger,  273,  308,  309,  310 
Morse,  S.  F.  B.,  184-6 
Mulberry  Bend  and  Street,  82, 

112 

Murray  Hill,  205-212 
Murray,  Lindley,  205,  206 
Murray  mansion,  206 
Murray,  Mrs.,  210 

— N.— 

Narrows,  the,  337,  338 
National  Arts  Club,  161 
Nelson,  Admiral,  at  New  York, 
330 

New  Dorp,  339 

New  Rochelle,  297-299 

"New  Woman,"  the,  250 

New  York:  boroughs  of,  4;  pop- 
ulation, 5;  seal  of,  10-12;  plan 
of,  made  in  1811,  14-17;  lit- 
erary characteristics  of,  27 

"Night  Before  Christmas,"  165 

Ninth  Regiment,  155 

North  River,  302,  303 

— O.— 

"Old  Homestead,  The,"  78 


INDEX 


Oldest  house  in  New  York,  293 
Osborne,  Sir  Danvers,  49 
Our  Lady  of  Lourdes,  Church  of, 
138 

— P.— 

Paine,  Thomas,  297,  298,  351, 
352 

Parkhurst,  Dr.,  church  of,  149 

Paulist  Church,  258-9 

Payne,  John  Howard,  23,  24 

Pelham  Bay,  295 

Pennsylvania  Railroad:  hotel  of, 
180;  station  of,  216-7 

Perry,  Oliver  Hazard,  63,  64 

Philipse,  Frederick,  309,  310 

Philipse  Manor  Hall,  304 

Philipse,  Mary,  273,  304,  306- 
309,  310 

Pirates,  53 

Players'  Club,  161 

Plaza,  the,  192 

Plymouth  Church,  291 

Poe,  26,  27,  75 

Population  of  New  York,  5 

Portraits:  Clinton,  63;  Halleck, 
185;  Hamilton,  62;  Jaudenes, 
352;  Jefferson,  324;  Lafayette, 
185;  Perry,  63;  Mary 
Philipse,  304;  Seward,  62; 
Van  Buren,  62;  Washington, 
61,  184,  324;  in  Philipse 
Manor  Hall,  310;  in  Public 
Library,  184-6;  early  sale  of, 
182 

Prison  ships,  British,  292 
Prospect  Park,  291 
"Prue  and  I,"  173,  259,  367 
Public  Library,  183-186 
Pumps,  365 

Putnam,  General,  125,  208-9, 
211 

-Q.- 
Quaker Meeting  House,  163 
Queensboro  Bridge,  68 

— R.— 
"Raven,  The,"  26,  76 


Real  Estate,  251-2 

Ren  wick,  191 

Richmond  Hill,  284 

Riots:    Doctors',    101;  Bread, 

102;  Draft,  102;  Astor  Place, 

102 

Riverside  Drive  and  Park,  259- 

265,  304 
Rochambeau,  311 
Roebling,  69 

Roosevelt,  birthplace  of,  31 
Russian  brass  trade,  116;  cathe- 
dral, 136-8 

— S.— 

Sailors'  Snug  Harbor,  254,  335 
St.  Esprit,  Church  of,  299 
St.  Gaudens,  45,  150,  192 
St.  George's  Church,  163 
St.  John,  Cathedral  of,  271 
St.  John's  Chapel,  72-5 
St.  John's  Park,  72,  74 
St.  Mark's  Church,  3,  89-95 
St.  Paul's,  57-9 
St.  Paul's  Eastchester,  295 
St.  Peter's  Church,  331 
St.  Thomas'  Church,  192 
Schwab,  home  of,  198,  260 
Scott,  Sir  Walter,  20,  286,  329 
Scott,  General  Winfield,  47 
Sculptors:  Bartholdi,  154;  Hou- 
don,    201 ;    MacMonnies,  65, 
323;  St.  Gaudens,  45,  150,  192 
Seal  of  the  City,  10-12 
Secession    proposal,    for  New 

York,  7 
Seventy-first  Regiment,  364 
Seward,  62,  151 
Shaw,  Bernard,  329 
Shops,  249,  250;   Allen  Street, 
116;     brass,     116;  Division 
Street,   115;   specialties,  190; 
department  stores,  249;  pic- 
turesque, 249 
Sickles,  General,  170 
Signs,  244-6 
Sleepy  Hollow,  313 
Slocum  fountain,  119 
Sloughter,  Governor,  66,  95 


INDEX 


Smith,  F.  Hopkinson,  28,  29,  30 
Standard  Oil  Company,  44 
Staten  Island,  331,  335,  337,  338, 
339 

Statues:  Arthur,  161;  Colum- 
bus, 39;  Conkling,  151;  Far- 
ragut,  150;  Franklin,  186; 
Garibaldi,  361;  George  the 
Third,  41;  Hale,  Nathan,  65; 
Kosciuszko,  323;  Jones,  Paul, 
201;  Lafayette,  153;  Liberty, 
154,  334;  Lincoln,  155;  Pitt, 
41;  Seward,  151;  Sherman, 
192;  Sigel,  260;  Stuyvesant, 
94;  Verazzano,  39;  Washing- 
ton, 52,  153,  201,  323 

Steuben,  Baron,  125,  269-270 

Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  333 

Stirling,  Lord,  49 

Stock  Exchange,  54 

Stony  Point,  314 

Studio  quarters,  158,  159,  172, 
344,  366 

Stuart,  Gilbert,  184,  324,  352 

Stuyvesant  Petrus,  89-96,  271, 
331 

Stuyvesant  Square,  162-4 
Submarine,  of  Fulton,  336 
Sully,  324 

Superstitions,  231-240 
— T.— 

Tallmadge,  Major,  317,  318 
Tammany,  124-134,  292 
Tappan  Zee,  311,  312 
Tarry  town,  312-314 
Taylor,  Bayard,  39 
Temple,  Charlotte,  49 
Tenement  District,  107-123 
Tennyson,  49 
Terry,  Ellen,  10 

Thackeray:  dinner  to,  28;  opin- 
ion of  New  York,  9;  a  Pick- 
wickian adventure,  10;  on 
Broadway,  70 

Theaters,  219-220 

Tilden,  home  of,  161 

Tombs,  the,  84 

Tompkins,  Governor,  95 


Tompkins  Square,  119 
Tottenville,  335 

To^^^lsend:  "Just  Across  the 
Square,"  360 

Trinity  Church,  45-51 

Trollope,  Mrs.,  12 

Trumbull:  portrait  of  Washing- 
ton, 61;  of  Hamilton,  62 

Twain,  Mark,  170,  184 

Tyler,  President,  22 

— U.— 

Union  Square,  152-7 

"Unrest,"  the,  3 

Upjohn,  Richard,  45,  171,  172 

— v.— 

Van  Arsdale,  John,  338 
Van  Beuren  house,  105 
Van  Bibber,  171,  174 
Van  Buren,  portrait  of,  62 
Van  Cortlandt  Mansion,  278 
Van  Vredenburgh,  40 
Verazzano,  3,  39,  302 
Verplanck's  Point,  314 
Visitors  to  New  York,  216 

— W.— 

Waldorf-Astoria,  179 
Wall  Street,  44,  51-55,  164,  302 
Wallabout  Bay,  292 
Warren,  Sir  Peter,  347 
Washington  Arch,  168,  361 
Washington,  George:   and  Gen- 
eral Howe,  9;  meeting  Irving, 
21;  his  dogs,  9;  his  Battery 
walk,  34;  inauguration  of,  52; 
at  Fraimces  Tavern,  55,  56; 
his   pen,   59;    his   desk,  64; 
portraits   of,    61,    184,  324; 
statues  of,  52,  153,  201,  323; 
landing  in  New  York,  332;  in 
Chelsea,  166-7;  his  attention 
to  clothes,  126,  279,  307;  in 
1775,  101  ;  his  signature,  124; 
on  Murray  Hill,  207-211;  the 
early  shad,  229;   on  Cherry 


INDEX 


Hill,  67-8;  at  Fort  Washing- 
ton, 266-7;  at  Jumel  Mansion, 
273,  274;  at  Van  Cortlandt, 
279;  and  Anthony  Wayne, 
314;  and  Mary  Philipse,  304, 
306-9;  imperishable  words  of, 
369 

Washington  Mews,  366 
Washington    Square,    29,  359- 
369 

Wayne,  Anthony,  314 

Weeks,  trial  of,  64-5 

West  Point,  317,  327 

White,  Stanford,  121,  149,  150, 

160,  361 
Whitman,  Walt,  70,  292,  303 
William  the  Fourth,  329-330 
Williamsburgh  Bridge,  68,  112 


Winthrop,  Theodore,  29 
Wolcott,  Oliver;  the  George  the 

Third  statue,  42-3 
Wolfe;  his  lost  monument,  242 
Wood,  Fernando,  7 
Woolworth  Building,  60 
Worth  monument,  152 

— X  — 

— Y.— 

Yonkers,  304 
Yorkville,  270 

Zoological  Gardens,  296 


377 


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